


Videre

by Guede



Series: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [8]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Crack Treated Seriously, Demon Hunters, Enemies to Friends, Fallen Angels, Fashionista Demon Cristiano, Gen, Ghosts, Guilt, Incubus Cristiano, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Magic, Moral Dilemmas, Murder Mystery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunions, Unrequited Love, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:58:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6186691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Figo is off on vacation, Alberto tries to hold down the fort and Kaká does some investigating into Andriy’s whereabouts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2010.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alberto minds the foxes while Figo’s away, and Kaká does a solo job.

“Oh, and don’t touch that one unless it’s a pending apocalypse and it’s Zlatan’s fault,” Figo added, waving at a little jet carving on the bookshelf. He ducked back into his office, then came out with a plastic bag with…dried things in it. “And this one is for Rui Costa. He said he’d come around five tomorrow to pick it up.”

Alberto stared at the bag’s contents and nodded attentively. Then he winced and hastily shifted his arms around the squeaking fox he was holding. He carefully worked a notepad out from under the demon and scribbled in it. “Sorry, was that too tight? Okay, so I…um, think I have everything down. Rui Costa, werewolves, ghoul repellant. Don’t use things from the kitchen unless the foxes say it’s okay. Don’t borrow books. Polish the warding charms on the back door once a day. I…are you sure you want me for this? I mean, I know the foxes already know me, but I’m not really great at magic and you already have Father Thuram and Kaká.”

“Well, no, I don’t. Lilian and Kaká are covering my clientele for the time being, but unless something drastic happens they can’t get into the backrooms.” Figo dropped off the bag of dried things and then went back into the office. He was nearly a minute this time before he returned with a roll-on suitcase and a ring of keys. “I don’t expect that you should have to do anything more than just helping the foxes with customer service once in a while. They can handle any magical issues, but not everyone who comes here is already used to demons.”

“Oh, okay,” Alberto said. Then something touched his ankle and he looked down to see Silva and another fox by his feet. The second fox was a tad smaller than Silva and very light-colored, like unbaked pastry dough. When he saw Alberto looking at him, he eeped and ducked behind Silva’s tail, only to have Silva shove him back out. “Um, hi? Is it time to switch?”

The fox in Alberto’s arms growled. “No.”

“It is too, you hog,” Silva retorted. “Don’t make me come up there.”

“Not fair, he was talking to Figo so it wasn’t like I had a nice nap…” Complaining all the way, the fox Alberto had been petting climbed onto Alberto’s shoulder and then leaped down. He vanished into a chair’s shadow, then slid out of the shadow’s bottom and stalked off.

Alberto bent down and held out his hands to the new fox. Usually they jumped in right away, but this one hung back and took a couple tentative sniffs of Alberto’s fingers. Then a look back at Silva, and only then did the fox edge into Alberto’s arms. He stiffened when Alberto tried to touch his head, but Silva hissed at him and as Alberto gently stroked his ears, the fox began to relax.

“Are you lot done?” Figo peered down at the cringing fox, then dangled the keys by Alberto’s face. “Anyway, if something comes up that the foxes or Lilian can’t handle, you should talk to Gianluigi about it. He might be playing around with mortality but he’s still more than capable of dealing with most problems.”

“All right. He might be a little—”

“If he gets annoyed, just refer him to me when I come back,” Figo said. Once Alberto had grabbed the keys, the other man turned back to his luggage. He pulled out the handle and then scanned the room with narrowed eyes. “Oh, and I think Lilian has his own suppliers these days, but there’s a small chance he might ask you to get something from here for him. I told him he could borrow just about anything. The foxes know where everything is.”

Alberto nodded again. He tried to get his notebook around to write that down, but the fox demon seemed to think Alberto was dumping him out and sprang straight up. His head knocked into the underside of Alberto’s chin and sent Alberto off his feet and back onto the ground. Thankfully Alberto didn’t go so far as to fall over, but he sat down pretty hard and he must’ve rattled the fox something awful, judging by how much he ached himself. He petted the fox to try and calm it down, and told himself to write down the note later.

“Well, I think that that’s about it. Any questions?” Figo asked.

“No, I think I’ve got down everything. I don’t think it’ll be a problem since I’m off till the restaurant opens again.” The fur under Alberto’s fingers was still a little stiff, but the fox was starting to hang his paws over Alberto’s arm, so he seemed all right. Then Alberto remembered and looked quickly around, afraid that he might’ve sat on Silva. He let out a sigh of relief when he spotted Silva across the room, playfully batting Villa’s tail. “Do you want me to meet you here when you come back, to give you the keys?”

Figo shook his head. “No, that’s my spare set. I’ll be back late, so there’s no reason for you to stay up for me. Just drop by in the morning.”

“Okay. Well, I hope you and Zinedine have a nice trip,” Alberto said, trying to stand up. It was tricky because he couldn’t put down the fox, and he didn’t have the greatest sense of balance anyway, but he eventually managed it. “I’ll try to take good care of everything.”

Figo smiled and reached out to clap Alberto on the shoulder. “Thanks, Alberto. I’m sure you will.” Then he glanced around the room with a much sterner look. “And all of you. I’ll _know_.”

Shadows all over the room sort of shivered. Then, to a chorus of yips and barks, Figo rolled his bag out of the room. Alberto followed to make sure the door shut properly. Then he remembered about the note and carefully nudged the fox, who by now was quite relaxed, onto a shoulder so he could use his notebook.

“Awesome.” Cesc appeared out of nowhere to Alberto’s left in human form. He looked apologetic about Alberto’s jump, then grinned and nuzzled Alberto’s shoulder. The fox sitting there yipped and Cesc obligingly righted him. “So we get you for a whole week, huh?”

“Er, well, I actually have to go pick up the groceries right now, but I’ll be back in for a bit after dinner. Why? Is there something I missed? I didn’t think there was anything tonight,” Alberto said, his stomach sinking a bit. Figo had barely left and already he wasn’t sure what to do. He started flipping through his notebook.

“No, no, grocery run is fine,” Cesc said. “And like Figo said, we can handle everybody except the people who freak out at a perfectly good pair of ears.” He fingered his furry ones, looking a bit indignant. “Don’t worry, we’ll be good. It’s you, after all, and we’re just so glad that Figo decided not to let those priests do it instead.”

Alberto breathed out slowly and closed his notebook. A moment later he realized he was clutching it so hard he was bending the cardboard covers and he hurriedly stuck it into his coat-pocket. “Is there…was there a fight?” he asked uncertainly. “I thought…Father Thuram was—”

Cesc rolled his eyes. “Oh, _he’s_ fine. It’s just he comes with Kaká and that one’s plain _creepy_.”

“Creepy?” Granted, Alberto didn’t know Kaká very well but the man had always been polite to him. It was true that Kaká didn’t exactly try to be friendly, but Alberto had never taken offense since every time they’d met, Kaká had either been coming from or going to some important job, and he’d just assumed the other man was in a hurry.

“Yeah, creepy,” Cesc repeated. “Him and that cheese-filled incubus who hangs around him these days.”

“Incubus?”

* * *

Cristiano looked back with wide, surprised eyes. “What? I thought you’d be happy.”

A few choice words rose to Ricardo’s tongue but he grimly kept his silence. Instead he finished wiping the last of the chalk marks off the ground with a rag. He heard footsteps at his back but kept his eyes on the ground. If any recognizable trace of the circle he’d drawn remained, even for a few minutes, a malevolent force might be able to reverse his exorcism to call back the very evil spirit he’d just banished.

“All right, you don’t like it when I don’t call ahead.” A hand clapped hard on Ricardo’s shoulder, nearly sending him off his feet. Then Cristiano squatted down in front of him, craning his neck to peer up into Ricardo’s face. “Next time I’ll give you a ring, okay?”

“No, that’s not okay,” Ricardo said tightly. “I told you, I don’t want you—”

The mobile had a white case encrusted with glittering clear stones. Cristiano rotated it slightly so that Ricardo could see that the stones spelled out the demon’s name. Then Cristiano flipped it back towards him and the phone vanished. In its place was Cristiano’s reproving expression. “Like, _call_ you. What did you think I meant, possessing somebody?”

“I don’t have a phone number.” Ricardo balled up the rag in his hand, then put that hand down to push himself up. He absently dusted off his trousers and scanned the alley for any last remnants of the exorcism.

“Liar,” Cristiano snorted. He’d stood up as well and now he slid to Ricardo’s side. He flicked a large, aviator-style pair of sunglasses from the top of his head down over his eyes. “And you totally did think I meant possessing somebody. C’mon, that’s for old-timers. It’s a fucking lot of trouble just to take over somebody when you’ve got things like email and texting.”

In truth Ricardo did have a number for his rooms in the seminary, but the phone was in the hall and he shared it with the rest of the floor. It was a number for him and it wasn’t—and two minutes in Cristiano’s company and he was already debating the desirability of lying. He grimaced and began to walk out of the alley.

“Oh, _c’mon_.” Cristiano easily swung into stride besides Ricardo, occasionally bending forward to turn up an importuning face. “Don’t be like that. I could be off making people fuck. The longer I’m here, the less other people are sinning.”

They must have looked a mismatched pair. Ricardo no longer wore the seminary student uniform, but out of habit he still found himself naturally choosing conservative neutrals. On the other hand, Cristiano had on designer jeans, a pastel green t-shirt and fluorescently-colored sneakers that appeared so new they lacked any creases across the toes. Diamonds sparkled from his ears and the egg-sized watch-face on his wrist.

“You know, you ever want to update your wardrobe, I’ll be there for you. Call it a bonus service,” Cristiano said, catching Ricardo’s look. He waggled his brows, then grabbed Ricardo’s shoulder and hung from it while he laughed. “My God, your face sometimes, priest.”

“I’m not a priest. And I know you are what you are, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t blaspheme around me,” Ricardo replied. He moved his shoulder so Cristiano let go it, then put his hands in his pockets. “All right, why are you here this time?”

Cristiano shrugged. “I’m bored. Why are you here?”

After a moment, Ricardo turned away. He looked up at the building before them. Three stories tall, with thick stone walls and peeling paint. A small plaque by the door stated that it had once been an inn with some historical relevance; another, less elegant sign in the front window proclaimed that there were rooms free to let. Ricardo climbed the two front steps and knocked on the door. “I’m taking care of a case. Please…if you’re going to stay, please be…polite.”

“Okay,” Cristiano said, sounding bemused. He remained on the sidewalk.

Ricardo breathed out and mentally composed his explanation for the client, who was the landlord of the building. The man had gone to his local priest with concerns that some sort of supernatural being had taken up residency in one of the third-floor rooms, plaguing the renters with night-time groans and thumps, mysteriously broken dishes and abrupt changes in water temperature. One renter had had to go to the hospital with mild burns after a scalding during a shower. Eventually the story had made its way to Lilian, who’d asked Ricardo to look into it since he had a conflicting case he was seeing to for Figo.

The door opened and the landlord peered out at Ricardo. He was a short, stocky man with a wispy goatee and slightly watery eyes. “You done?”

“I believe so. Fortunately it turned out not to be very serious,” Ricardo said, using his most calming tone. “It wasn’t a demon at all, only a—”

“You got rid of it from outside?” the landlord barked. He opened the door more widely and then pushed himself into the jamb, looking suspiciously at Ricardo. “Don’t you have to go into the room where it was? How do you know it’s gone?”

Reactions to exorcisms could run the full spectrum of human emotion, so Ricardo shouldn’t have been surprised at the man’s hostility. He set back his shoulders and looked the other man in the eye. “Where the exorcism is done isn’t critical so long as the entity can be drawn to that place, and I assure you that I did remove the ghost. But if you’d like, I can go—”

“ _Ghost_. Look, that wasn’t a goddamn ghost that was doing all those things.” The landlord glanced over his shoulder. Then he whipped around as Ricardo stepped up and aggressively thrust out his head. “You can’t go in there right now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Ricardo had only been curious to see if a manifestation had just occurred inside the house. He hadn’t heard anything, and the man’s overall demeanor didn’t seem to concur with another scare. Nor were his more otherworldly senses telling him that anything was amiss, but it would be inappropriate to leave a case before the victims were completely confident that they would no longer suffer supernatural afflictions. “All right. Is there a convenient time for you?”

The landlord didn’t immediately answer. He continued to eye Ricardo as if he believed Ricardo had brought the evil into his dwelling. Then his lips writhed back in a grimace and he jerked his head aside. “I don’t know right now. I’ll call you.”

“I…” Ricardo was uncomfortably aware of Cristiano’s presence behind him “…all right. I’ll see that my schedule is cleared for tomorrow.”

He gave the man the number for his floor’s phone, then stepped back. The man promptly shut the door in Ricardo’s face; a few flecks of paint came off the lintel and drifted between Ricardo and the door. He looked at them, then upwards. Some of the windows had their curtains open, but neither of the two on the third floor did. The left-hand one did have a box full of brilliant red flowers, but they were ordinary plants, not anything usable for spells.

After a few more looks around, Ricardo turned and went back down the steps. He glanced at Cristiano, then sighed and straightened his shoulders. He looked fully at the demon. “Yes, I have a phone number. But I share it with several others who would not benefit from your conversation.”

“I know. You need to get a mobile too, besides the boring clothes,” Cristiano said. He plucked at Ricardo’s sleeve, then dropped it with a disgusted look. “No wonder people don’t trust you. You say you’re gonna save them and you look like you’ve come to bury them.”

Ricardo couldn’t help a thin smile. “You think that man didn’t trust me because of the way I dress?”

For a moment Cristiano stared at him expressionlessly, head tilted to the right. Without animation, the demon’s features were flat and cold. Then Cristiano grinned and his eyes lighted up in a way that was uncomfortably human. “I like you better when you’re not being such a goody-goody. So you know he’s fucking you around, huh?”

“It’s not being a ‘goody-goody,’ it’s understanding that, while I wish to protect humanity, that which I want to protect does have its failings and that I should consider such in order to provide as much service as my abilities allow,” Ricardo said tersely, turning away. He was aware of how labored he sounded, and that his voice echoed his feelings. And he was hardly content with that; by now he should have a firm grasp on his…on the core reasons of his faith and of the motive for his actions. When Lilian talked of such things, he spoke with such serenity that Ricardo felt the aching lack of the same all the more keenly.

“Then why’d you help him?” Cristiano asked.

Ricardo stopped and looked at the building again. “There are more people than him living there, and they were suffering as well,” he said. He reached under his collar and absently tugged his rosary, shifting the beads so they weren’t pinching his skin. “If Lilian was here, he would have talked to the man while I looked around and drew out the circle. I didn’t…I…”

He paused, then twisted back towards Cristiano, but Cristiano was looking down the road. A car came towards them, then pulled up to the curb a few meters away. It was an older model with a dented front fender, and scuffed white paint.

The man that got out didn’t fit the car. He was taller than Ricardo, with an appearance of African descent, and his suit’s cost spoke softly from the perfect tailoring and drape of the dark fabric. His eyes casually swept over Ricardo, then continued onwards to the building’s door. He was not a demon, but he radiated the kind of power only demons or angels should have.

Something pulled at Ricardo’s arm. He frowned at it, saw the hand and then looked up at an unusually sober Cristiano. “Let’s go,” Cristiano said. “Not the time or the place, Kaká.”

Perhaps it was the use of his nickname, but Ricardo let Cristiano lead him down the street a ways. Then he pulled away his arm and glanced back towards the house. The car was still there, but the man was gone.

“He’s just going to talk. You can come back tomorrow, like the man said.” Cristiano stepped into the street and waved down a taxi. Then he shook his head playfully at Ricardo. “Ah, it’s all right, I’ll pay for this one. I know it’s all charity but can’t you at least charge transportation money?”

Ricardo shook his head. He opened his mouth, then looked again at the house. Then Cristiano pushed him into the cab and Ricardo shut his mouth. He briefly considered getting out of the other side, and then he sighed and reluctantly instructed the driver to go to the seminary.

* * *

Gianluigi wasn’t home when Alberto dropped off the groceries, but he’d left a note. Unfortunately part seemed to be in really old Latin—Gianluigi did that sometimes when he was in a hurry, and forgot which version of Italian Alberto had learned—and since Alberto wasn’t totally sure what Gianluigi meant, he headed over to the restaurant.

The renovations were all done, but they were still waiting for some of the permits to come through. Paolo and Sandro occasionally did impromptu dinners for regulars, and Sandro was still working on the new menu, so Alberto was hoping to catch one of them in the kitchen. But he was unlucky and only found Adriana and a couple of senior waiters, who told him Sandro had just stepped out with Zlatan to run some errand. Alberto wasted some time fretting over how important the note might be and whether he was screwing up something of Gianluigi’s by not being able to read it, and then he remembered the foxes knew Latin too.

“Says he’s going to be out till one and he’s very sorry. There’s a nest of rat demons he found that he has to destroy,” Cesc said. He and the other foxes crowded around Alberto shuddered. “Don’t worry about him, get some sleep, go see Paolo if you absolutely have to but he doubled up the wards just in case.”

“Oh. I was wondering why things looked sort of shiny around the place.” Not that Alberto was any closer to being anything special than he’d been before he’d found out about angels and demons, but he could sort of _see_ magic a little these days. “Okay. Well, I guess I have to save the oxtails for tomorrow’s dinner, then. It’s too bad, he really likes them.”

Cesc handed back the note and then patted Alberto on the shoulder. “If it makes you feel better, I’d totally stay home for oxtails. It’s not like the rat demons are going anywhere—ow!”

“Opportunist,” Villa muttered, shouldering his way onwards to the front of the store.

“We’re _foxes_ ,” Cesc yelled after him. “Obviously! Honestly, what’s his problem? He and Raúl got over their stupid spat, and I know he got laid last night—ow!”

Silva removed his foot from Cesc’s foot and then smiled pleasantly at Alberto. “If you want, you can have dinner with us. It’s paella night and believe it or not, we were just about to call you. This client thing of Figo’s came up.”

Alberto must have looked like he was going to run out of there screaming because suddenly he had Silva, Cesc and Xavi—when had _Xavi_ shown up?—telling him it was no big deal, nothing magical, no hellhounds. He opened his mouth to tell them it was okay and instead he ended up taking a deep breath. His vision got sharper and he realized he’d been holding his breath.

“It’s just this phone call,” Cesc explained. “No big deal, you just have to say we’re back-ordered on fox demon nail clippings and ask if she wants to cancel or change her order. She’s really nice, I’ve met her, but we can’t call because she sets her phone to not ring for demons.”

“She can tell that through the phone?” Alberto asked. Then he winced at himself, since with everything he’d seen that didn’t seem like it’d be too hard. “Oh, well, okay, I can do that. Um…do you have her order form around? In case she’s got questions about it?”

Xavi twirled into fox form and bounded purposefully off, which Alberto took to mean that he was going to get it. Cesc said he’d get the phone.

“The paella’s normal too, by the way,” Silva said after a moment of awkward silence. “Sometimes we hang out at this Spanish restaurant where the cook has a little bit of second sight, and he showed us how to make it human-style. I think it tastes better that way, less glowy stuff.”

“Okay,” Alberto muttered. He belatedly remembered Gianluigi’s note and slipped it into his pocket before he had a chance to lose it. For a couple seconds he tried not to think too hard about what they wanted him to do, and then he just gave up. He knew he was probably going to regret asking, but if he didn’t, he’d be too distracted to do anything right for the rest of the night, and he had a hard enough time with that already. “Er…nail clippings?”

Silva blinked. Then he held up his hands and looked at his fingertips. They were human nails at the moment and were very short. “Yeah. I don’t get it either, but apparently they’re good for spells for attracting friends, and letting Figo sell them sort of makes up for the trouble we get him into. It’s just they only grow so fast, and we just shipped off a ton to Manchester.”

“Oh, I see.” Of course Alberto didn’t but he wanted to be polite. He bit his lip, then was about to ask Silva about the ‘glowy stuff’ when he heard raised voices in the store’s front rooms.

So did Silva. He stiffened, then hissed and whipped downwards. A black blur zipped towards the door, then disappeared under it just as Alberto touched the knob. Alberto hurriedly opened the door.

Silva leaped up onto a shelf within Alberto’s reach and Alberto got hold of the fox just about the same time he stumbled behind the checkout desk. He kept himself from running into Villa’s back by a mere hair, caught himself against the desk and looked up to see…a very big man. Not _fat_ , but big: tall as Zlatan with even broader shoulders, and looking even bigger because his dark skin blended into his dark power suit.

The man smiled at Alberto and his teeth were the kind of white that really did flash in the dark, like there were tiny lights installed behind each tooth. “Hello. Is Figo in?”

“I just said he’s not,” Villa snapped.

“No,” Alberto said, feeling more and more uncomfortable. The man hadn’t even looked at Villa but had just kept looking at him, and he was starting to remember why it was a good idea for him to leave the dangerous supernatural stuff to people who could actually handle it. “He’s really not. He’s out of the country till Saturday, but we can take a message if you want.”

“Thank you, but that won’t do for me. It’ll be too late by then,” the man said. He gave them a polite little nod and began to turn away. Then he stopped. He put his hand to his chin as if he’d thought of something, then looked back at Alberto. “Do you have authority to dispense?”

Villa shouldered in front of Alberto. “Depends. What do you want?”

The man looked Villa over coolly, with the sort of faint smile that people used when Alberto had just told them they didn’t have a reservation and couldn’t get in, and they weren’t the kind of people who were used to needing reservations. Usually Zlatan dealt with them, but Zlatan wasn’t around and as much as Alberto trusted the foxes, he really couldn’t help notice how the man dwarfed Villa.

“Never mind.” The man nodded at them again. “Good evening.”

Then he turned around and this time he walked out of the store. Up till the door shut behind him, Villa stayed in front of Alberto; the fox-demon’s hands were down by his sides, below the counter, but his claws were out. Silva’s fur was prickly under Alberto’s hands, and as the man’s shadow passed by the front window, half a dozen foxes suddenly emerged from the shadows and clambered up onto the sill to watch him go. It was all really quiet in the way that Alberto had learned meant he’d better start looking around for help.

“It’s okay, I think he’s gone now,” Silva said. He climbed onto Alberto’s shoulder, one eye still on the street outside. “He’s not a demon, by the way. He’s a nemesis.”

Alberto bit his lip. Ever since Gianluigi had—had _fallen_ —Alberto had tried to start reading up on things. Mostly to make sure he didn’t screw up Gianluigi, but also because it looked like he was going to be stumbling into this kind of conversation for the rest of his life and it’d be nice if he didn’t always feel like a complete idiot. But he never seemed to read the right books, so he always had to ask. “What’s a nemesis?”

* * *

“You know, those lunatics who go around hunting down other people’s sins, like there aren’t already demons who do that?” Cristiano winked at their waitress and then eagerly tore into his cannoli. “You want somebody guilted, I don’t see what’s wrong with a demon.”

When they’d arrived at the seminary, Cristiano had immediately stated he was hungry and had wanted to go up to Ricardo’s rooms. Of course Ricardo had refused, but he hadn’t been about to let Cristiano go without an explanation for the demon’s behavior earlier. After much complaining, Cristiano had agreed to compromise on a bakery two blocks away if Ricardo bought the food “to make up for the cab fare.” Ricardo had looked at the money in his wallet, the latest payment from his trust fund, and had grimaced at what his parents would have thought. Then he’d paid for the cannoli and some cookies.

“I have seen demons use guilt, but only to drive people into committing far worse sins. For your kind it’s not a tool to urge penitence,” Ricardo dryly said.

“Hey, hey, what’s with all this ‘you’? I thought I told you, _I_ don’t do guilt. I just get the fucking going, and then it’s all them after that.” A fluffy smear of cannoli filling stuck to Cristiano’s lip as he looked up, spoiling his affronted expression. He blinked at Ricardo, then grinned and wiped off the smear with a finger. Then he licked off his finger. “Anyway. You asked why I wanted to get away from there. He’s a nemesis. That’s why.”

Ricardo frowned. “But what would that matter to you? You’re a demon. He…I suppose he felt powerful enough to take you on, but it’s not his mission to exorcise demons and the nemeses I’ve encountered before generally stick to their—”

“Because I told you, I don’t do guilt. That’s _all_ they do.” Cristiano dried his finger off with a napkin that he then flicked into the corner of the table. Then he looked at Ricardo again, no longer good-humored. “Plus I like you, but you’re the most boring when you’re worrying about everything you’ve done wrong, and he might’ve come after you for free after he was done there. You look like you’re asking for it often enough.”

“Me?” Ricardo asked, startled. But then he began to think about it.

Fingers snapped in his face. Then Cristiano shook his head. “See, you’re doing it again.”

“Never mind about me,” Ricardo said after a long moment. “You said he was there to do…to do his work. With one of the tenants? The landlord?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Even if it’s the landlord, you did do that exorcism right and you’re all done there.” Cristiano picked up the rest of his cannoli and stuck it into his mouth. The crunchy pastry shell flaked away from his teeth and looked about to fall when a zip of black slurped it into Cristiano’s mouth. Then Cristiano wiped his lips with a fresh napkin, as daintily as a girl at her first formal dinner.

Ricardo glanced out the window again, then let his eyes drop so they fell to his wrists, which were crossed on the table. His watch wasn’t quite out of his sleeve so he twisted his hand till he could see its face.

“You’re going to go back anyway.” Shaking his head, Cristiano reached over and picked up Ricardo’s uneaten cookie. He put it back into the paper bag with the rest of the cookies, then rolled down the bag’s top. “It’s people versus people. There’s no demon. Why do you care?”

“You can have those,” Ricardo said, nodding at the bag. Then he got up from the table and went out of the shop. Cristiano didn’t follow him.

* * *

The paella tasted good and Alberto didn’t see anything glowy in it, and he didn’t start glowing afterward, so he thought it was fine. He helped wash up and then saw the newest kits, and then he and a few of the foxes sat by the store window and watched the night-time crowd.

“I like those shoes,” Cesc said, sprawling out on the sill. He was in human form and he turned onto his back so he could push his bare feet up the side of the window. “The high-tops? What do you think?”

Xavi and the really shy fox from earlier were curled up in Alberto’s lap, but Xavi pushed his head out enough to look. “I think you need to clean your feet more. What is that, fungus?”

“No!” Cesc twisted onto his stomach and then crawled using his elbows till he could glare at Xavi. “Demons don’t get athlete’s foot, you weirdo. I got roped into helping Mori check the plumbing for hair balls. Must be gunk left over from that.”

Alberto was wistfully eyeing a smart-looking grey trench making its way across the far end of the street. He needed a new coat, but even with the restaurant closed, he’d not managed to find the time to go get one. Gianluigi had decided he’d like to learn how to drive, just in case Alberto couldn’t and for some reason he couldn’t do that demon-angel thing where they popped in and out of thin air, and that had taken up most of Alberto’s vacation. He could have gone tonight, but he liked having Gianluigi come shopping with him, even if the ex-angel spent the whole time looking funny at the clerks. He kept thinking they were flirting, even though Alberto had explained it was just something people in customer service did to get more sales or tips.

“Maybe it’s demon fungus gunk,” Xavi said, unrepentant. He hung his paws over Alberto’s arm. “Figo keeps a lot of crazy stuff down there so you never know.”

“I know you’re being a jerk right now.” Cesc stuck out his lower lip, then reached out and tweaked Xavi’s ear.

Xavi yelped and sort of somersaulted himself out of Alberto’s arms onto Cesc; Alberto had only been half-listening to those two and jerked up in surprise. Then he scrambled to keep hold of the other fox, who had yipped in fright and tried to jump onto his head. Except he accidentally grabbed the fox’s tail and not the leg like he’d meant, and like every animal Alberto had ever met, fox demons hated having their tails pulled.

When it all settled down, Xavi had gone to human form and he and Cesc were on the floor, and the other fox was a blotchy shadow on the window pane. Alberto had a little wedge torn out of his shirt-collar and he was trying to pull out his shirt to see how far the rip went when something outside caught his eye. He looked up, blinked, and then started to swing his feet down from the window sill.

“Ow!” Xavi’s head popped up with one fox-ear half-bent.

“Sorry, sorry,” Alberto hurriedly said, putting out his hand. He rubbed at the bent ear and Xavi looked less annoyed. “It’s just we’ve got a visitor.”

“What, now?” Cesc asked. He started to push himself up.

The shadow on the pane flitted down onto the sill and then pulled up into the shy fox. “It’s Kaká,” he said.

Cesc stopped where he was. Then he let himself fall back. “Oh, _him_.”

Alberto carefully stepped over the foxes and made his way to the door. He got it open just as Kaká had reached the stoop. Kaká seemed surprised to see Alberto, but after a moment the other man collected himself and nodded. He was a little stiff. “Good evening. Is Figo in?”

“No, and you’re watching his stuff for him,” said a voice Alberto hadn’t heard before. It belonged to a short, slight man with sandy-colored hair and fox e—oh, it must be the shy one.

Kaká looked blank. Then he grimaced and nodded absently. He put his hands in his pockets and then took them out. “He left today. I’m sorry, I forgot for a moment. And…” he looked at the fox demon like he didn’t really want to “…I apologize for interrupting your evening…I don’t remember being introduced to you.”

“Jesús,” the fox said.

A few seconds passed. Then Kaká gave himself a little shake. “Ah, all right.”

“What, demons can’t have a sense of irony?” Cesc said, coming up behind Alberto. “Anyway, what do you want?”

“I…” Kaká glanced from Cesc to Alberto “…I believe I have permission to borrow items for my work? I know it’s late notice, but it’s an emergency. There might be lives at stake.”

Alberto was about to step back and let the foxes work it out, but then he remembered he was the one who was technically in charge of that. He might not feel comfortable about it, but it was his job and he needed to at least try and do it. “What’s wrong? How bad is it?”

“There’s a nemesis in Milan,” Kaká said curtly.

“Yeah, we know,” Cesc said. Then he and Xavi, who’d come up too, shared a look. “I mean, are we talking about the same guy? Way tall, African, looks like he uses your bones to shine his teeth?”

Kaká grabbed the jamb and pulled himself partway into the store to look hard at Cesc. He either forgot or didn’t notice that Jesús was in the way and knocked into the fox-demon with one arm. Jesús pushed back and then sidestepped with a surprisingly nasty look at Kaká, who barely looked at him. “He was here?” Kaká asked. “What did he want?”

“What, is he after you?” Cesc put his hands on his hips and shoved his head out at Kaká. “You know, we were having a nice quiet night till you showed up.”

“Okay, okay, can we just…just not fight about this? Till I know what we’re talking about?” Alberto pleaded. He needled his hands in between Cesc and Kaká, then spread his arms. The two of them moved marginally apart. “Nemesis is that one who came in just before dinner?”

Still glowering at Kaká, Cesc nodded.

“He wanted to see Figo, but we told him Figo wasn’t here and he left,” Alberto told Kaká. The other man still didn’t seem that pleased about Cesc, but he actually looked Alberto in the eye when he was listening, so Alberto figured Kaká had calmed down. He put down his arms. “Is he going to hurt somebody?”

“I don’t know,” Kaká said after a moment. He pursed his lips, then turned nearly all the way around to look behind him. Then he turned back to Alberto. “I did an exorcism of an angry ghost earlier, and the nemesis came to the same building. I’m afraid he might be mixed up with the landlord—the man I did the exorcism for. If he is, he’ll go back there at midnight. I’m going to be waiting for him, but I need a—”

Jesús made a little noise. He looked nervous once he’d gotten their attention, but then he lifted his chin. “He’s a human. You can’t exorcise _him_ , you know.”

“I do.” For a moment Kaká sounded almost amused, and the sideways way he looked at Jesús reminded Alberto a lot of Zlatan. But then he took a deep breath and he was deadly serious again. “I would like to borrow a Hand of Glory,” he said.

That sounded vaguely familiar to Alberto, but he couldn’t recall much besides that it was a very unpleasant name for something. But the fox demons were all staring in shock at Kaká.

“I…uh, I think…” Xavi recovered first “…last I checked, that wasn’t Church-approved magic. And it’s not going to stop a nemesis. Not one that strong.”

Kaká was silent for a few seconds. He looked…he didn’t seem annoyed at Xavi, but he definitely wasn’t happy with what the fox demon had just said.

He looked like Zlatan whenever Zlatan had just agreed to help Paolo help another angel, Alberto finally decided. “Are people really in trouble?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Kaká said after a long moment. Then he frowned and looked at Alberto as if he’d momentarily forgotten Alberto was there. “But it’s likely. There are other people in the building. The ghost attacked them too, and I don’t think they have anything to do with the nemesis. I don’t want them to be hurt.”

“Okay. Well, I…” Alberto turned around and saw Cesc and Xavi looking curiously at him. And sort of disapprovingly, but even if Kaká didn’t like demons, what he was saying about the other people made sense to Alberto. “Figo said I could get things for you. It might take a moment, I don’t know where he keeps that…what did you say it was called?”

Cesc heaved a sigh. “I know where it is. Just hang on a second and I’ll get it.”

“Thank you,” Kaká said, and he really did sound like he meant it.

“We’re also going with you,” Xavi said.

A half-step into leaving, Cesc froze in place. Then he pivoted around to look at Kaká, who had inhaled sharply and was now pressing his lips tightly together. Kaká breathed in again and then opened his mouth.

“I’ll go too.” Alberto actually hadn’t blurted that one out this time but had thought it through first. Not that that kept him from flinching when everybody looked at him. “I…Figo asked me to keep an eye on his things so I think I’d better go.”

“I understand,” Kaká said slowly. “But I can give you my word that I’ll return it in the same condition that I receive it, and also, Alberto, I’m not sure that you’d be…safe.”

“I know, I know I don’t know about magic and I don’t want to die again. It was bad enough the first time.” The little laugh Alberto let out didn’t make him feel much better about that memory, and from the look on Kaká’s face, didn’t make the other man feel better either. “But I don’t want—I don’t want _anybody_ to get hurt. Not me, not you, not the people and not Cesc or Xavi either. I know you don’t like demons and it’s all right, Gianluigi doesn’t like them either but we all still sort of get along. But they’re my friends and I’m sorry, I don’t know if you’ll take care of them. I don’t think you’ll _hurt_ them but…I just…you know?”

“Gila,” Cesc said, sad and hangdog. When Alberto looked over, both he and Xavi had their ears drooping.

A sighing sound made Alberto look back at Kaká. The other man had his eyes closed and was rubbing at the spot between his brows, but he looked up almost immediately. He opened his mouth as if he meant to say something, but it was almost ten seconds before he actually did. “All right,” he said. He paused. “I’m sorry that you worry like that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Alberto said automatically. He just said that sort of thing whenever people looked at him like that.

Kaká looked like he was going to say more, but he didn’t. After another moment, he looked past Alberto, and then Alberto heard the sound of fox feet running away from them: Cesc going to get the…whatever it was that Kaká wanted. And then Alberto remembered he was supposed to be back at one when Gianluigi would come home, but they’d have to be at this place till at least midnight. He bit his lip and hoped it wouldn’t take long.

* * *

Three demons and Gilardino, who cohabitated with a fallen angel and who had apparently been resurrected at some point. If Lilian was here, he’d commend Ricardo on his progress in learning toleration, Ricardo thought wryly.

He stopped at the corner and then pointed out the building for Alberto. “It’s that one.”

“Oh.” Alberto stopped as well and looked. Then he shuffled his bag around to his front and opened the flap so the two demons inside could poke their heads out and see as well. The third demon alternated between fluttering as a shadow along Alberto’s back and perching on Alberto’s shoulder as if he was a pet bird. “It’s…it looks like it could use some paint.”

Ricardo murmured something in reply, but he was more preoccupied with trying to make out the cars in the dark alleys on either side of the building. It took him a while to spot the landlord’s car. Besides that man, it looked like at least three other people or families were home. It was still a small enough number that the Hand of Glory would be able to handle it…but using it for that sort of purpose would indisputably be beyond the pale.

“Here you go.” One of the demons had assumed its human form and was holding out the Hand of Glory towards Ricardo.

Ricardo jerked back. Then he took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, not yet.”

The demon raised its brows. “Not yet? This is a pretty dead street, but it’s a quarter till midnight and I think somebody’s gonna notice if you march over there and try to break in.”

“I’m not planning to go inside,” Ricardo said. He looked around, checking for anyone else on the street. Then he led them to the alley where he’d done the exorcism.

Someone had parked a car over the exact spot. It wasn’t an unnatural thing to do—Ricardo even half-remembered the landlord saying he’d had somebody move their car—but Ricardo stared at it for several seconds. Then he shook himself out of his irritation and looked around.

“What are you looking for?” Alberto asked.

“I…right here. I did it here, so I need to get this out of the way.” Ricardo bent down and peered into the car. He reflexively tried the door. It was locked so Ricardo went around to the trunk and attempted to gauge how much the car would weigh.

“It probably belongs to somebody who lives here,” Alberto was saying.

Ricardo nodded and squatted down, keeping one hand on the car’s back fender so he wouldn’t lose his balance. He peeked under the car, then sighed. It was one thing for him and Lilian to heave that old wreck they’d had in Brazil out of a muddy road, Lilian calmly quoting the Bible on patience in between taking the mud off his trousers in long swipes of hooked fingers. It was another to try and shift someone else’s car, solidly parked on hard pavement, and then…and then.

When Ricardo stood up Alberto and two of the demons were gone. The third one was sitting on the car’s trunk and watching Ricardo, the Hand of Glory at his side.

“They went to go see if they could find the owner and get them to move it for you,” the demon said. He wrapped his tail around his legs. “Just what _are_ you going to do? Because okay, Gila thinks you’re right and we need to help, but he’s just too nice a lot of the time. But you’re not allowed to take advantage of that.”

“I had no such intent,” Ricardo said sharply. He took a step back from the car, then looked around the alley. Then he looked back at the Hand of Glory. He accepted that the lines were more fluid than he’d believed when he’d first chosen his path in life, but there were still certain places where men’s souls shouldn’t go. It was only that these days he was not very certain where those places are.

The demon rolled his eyes. When they were in their animal form, fox demons did look…they were very cute. They looked like something that Ricardo’s nieces would love to watch on television. “Man, don’t tell me you don’t even have a plan. You’ve got one, right?”

“I exorcised a ghost that was terrorizing this building,” Ricardo said after a moment. “I didn’t ask it…when you exorcise things, you’re not supposed to engage with them. Because they’ll tell you lies to make you lose your concentration. They’ll try to make you mad. You can’t get mad or they can come back through you. So I didn’t ask why the ghost was still here.”

“Well, that’s usually a good idea,” the demon replied. “Stuff like that, stuff like us, we can be nice but only to people we want to be nice to.”

Ricardo nodded absently, turning in place. He looked up at the building just as a light on the second floor switched off. Then the window next to it brightened, as if someone was moving from room to room. “I did it this morning. The crossing-over place is still fresh…it’d still be like a door…and the Hand can open _any_ door…”

“Wait, wait, you wanna bring it back? There are like, a zillion reasons why that’s a bad—”

“I don’t want to—I can’t bring it back. That’d be raising the dead and I can’t—I am not a priest but I haven’t given up my faith,” Ricardo snapped. “It’s staying where I put it. But if I can open up a channel just for a moment—I can ask.”

Silence. Ricardo breathed out. Then he stiffened and looked down at his hands. He had a cut over his thumb from preparing dinner a few days ago, he absently noticed.

“A little known fact about the Hand,” said a deep voice. “It might not affect demons and other supernatural beings within its grasp, but if they are outside of that when the candle is lit, they remain outside.”

Ricardo turned around. Before him was the man he’d seen drive up earlier, holding the Hand of Glory. The candle in the Hand’s grip had its wick lit and it cast a drowsy light about a space a few meters in diameter. Just outside that, Ricardo could glimpse a dark blur darting about as if it and he were separated by a dome of smoky glass.

“I am inside,” Ricardo said after a moment. He looked back at the man.

“And you can still move.” No surprise in the man’s voice. He briefly inclined his head towards Ricardo. “I am Didier. I am not sure as to why you are here, but I overheard a little of your talk and I have to say, I do not believe it’ll be necessary to speak to spirits tonight.”

“Who are you here for?” Ricardo asked sharply.

Didier smiled. Then he suddenly turned the Hand towards himself and shoved it into his chest. A huge billow of thick, oily black smoke leaped up between them.

* * *

The front door came ajar when Alberto knocked at it. He blinked, then carefully nudged it open with his foot and peered inside. Behind the door was a small foyer with metal mailboxes set into one wall and a narrow staircase climbing up the other. A hallway led away from the back of the foyer and Alberto could see two or three doors in it.

Xavi hissed. Then he whipped away before Alberto could even fully turn around. While Alberto was staring outside, Jesús climbed out of the bag onto Alberto’s shoulder. “This isn’t good,” Jesús said in a small voice.

“Are you okay?” Alberto reached up to wrap his hand over Jesús’ side. “You can stay in the bag if you want. I can do all the talking.”

“Well, I’m a fox right now so I guess that’s a good idea,” Jesús said wryly. Then he bumped his head into Alberto’s cheek. “No, I’m—I’ll stay here. I’m okay, it’s just…this is _really_ different from Hell. I just came up and I didn’t like it down there, that’s why I came here, but it’s so…different.”

“No, I get that. I feel like that a lot, even though I’ve been here for a while,” Alberto replied. He took a few steps inside and looked down the hall again, and this time he noticed none of those doors had shoes or a welcome mat or anything in front of them. So he backed up and gingerly started up the stairs. “Weird things always seem to be happening around me. I don’t try to have them happen, and actually, most of the time I wish they wouldn’t—not that I’m complaining because usually it’s not that anybody could really help it—and it always just seems like there’s nothing that I really know around me.”

Jesús nodded. “Yeah, _exactly_. Okay, somebody’s home in number four.”

Alberto went over to that door and knocked. He didn’t hear anything and was about to try the next when the door suddenly rattled. Then it was yanked open and a man stared suspiciously out at him.

“Hi,” Alberto tried.

“I don’t want nothing to do with it,” the man said. “Nothing. I didn’t see it.”

“Er, well, I…I just wanted to know if you knew who has the car in the alley outside,” Alberto said. “It’s right under your window. The…the grey sedan, with the broken front headlight?”

The man went white. He gaped at Alberto for a few seconds, then tore about and ran back into the room. He left the door wide open behind him and Alberto started to run after him, just in case he was having a heart attack or something. Then Alberto stopped because the man had stopped. With one foot up and his arms flung out towards a window and Alberto had no idea how the man was balancing like that, let alone looking as immovable as a statue. He took another step towards the man.

Something nipped him sharply on the ear. “No! No! Fridge!” Jesús shouted.

Alberto looked around and saw the fridge. He went over and opened it up.

“Milk!” Jesús yelled, before Alberto even had time to think. “Milk! Window!”

There was a bottle of milk on the top shelf. Alberto grabbed it and then ran to the window. He suddenly wondered if he had the right one, but in the middle of wondering, he noticed that the alley below was full of smoke, as if somebody had set a fire. He didn’t see Kaká or Cesc. Terrified that they were caught in whatever was making the smoke, Alberto threw open the window. In the process he sloshed milk all over the place—over the floor, over him, and some even flew out the window with the bottle he’d forgotten he was holding.

“Cesc! Kaká!” Alberto shouted. “Fire! There’s a fire! Somebody—”

Well, _he_ was here. Alberto spun around, started to look and then cursed at himself for being an idiot. He took out his phone, and he was just telling the emergency dispatcher the address when the man suddenly unfroze.

“Did you see them?” the man hissed.

“I—” Confused, Alberto glanced back at the window. The smoke wasn’t there in the alley anymore.

Then he jerked back around as he heard the man—but Jesús popped up out of Alberto’s arms and he _snarled_ , and something big and black and shadowy wheeled up from his head. Looking through it was sort of like looking through black tissue paper: Alberto saw the man freeze again, and for a moment he thought that weird…whatever had come back.

But then the man whipped around and ran out of the apartment. By the time Alberto got down to the foyer, the man was outside on the stoop and standing there screaming as a small crowd gathered. Then someone shoved by Alberto and he saw another man stomp out and tell the first one to shut up. When that didn’t work, he hit the first man and the first man hit back, and then the police arrived.

“I burned them!” the first man shrieked at the cop who pulled him away. Then he flung his arm at the other man. “He gave me the bodies and I burned them! I burned it! It wouldn’t go all the way, it just fucking smoked like—like fucking oil in the air, and the _smell_ , and I _saw_ things in the smoke—”

Jesús nipped Alberto on the ear again. “The alley.”

Oh, right, _Cesc_ and Xavi and Kaká—Alberto edged as unobtrusively as he could around the crowd, and then hurried into the alley.

* * *

“It happened in Africa, but you cannot try him there because he has friends, and you cannot try him here because there is no evidence and no will. So I come.” Didier shrugged. The smoke ebbed and flowed around him; it stung Ricardo’s eyes and throat but left not a particle of soot on Didier’s snowy shirt-collar. “It is very little that I do, really. I talk to them. Maybe I show them something. But it’s their memories who keep them company, not me.”

“You sent the ghost,” Ricardo said.

“He wished to come. I helped,” Didier corrected. He pulled the Hand out of his shirt and then regarded it for a moment. Then he set it down at his feet. The smoke continued to pour out of him, out of the seams of his suit and the ends of his sleeves as if he had a fire inside of him. “He was a friend. When it was done I would have sent him back to where he should have rested, and he would have been content. But you sent him early, and you did not put him to rest.”

Ricardo coughed hard, then pulled his sleeve over his hand and tried to use it to filter the air into his mouth and nose. His eyes were burning so hard he could barely make out the other man. “Whatever cause he had in life, he was hurting other people. You can’t—you can’t hurt to heal a hurt. And you can’t use the dead like that. When you die you’re done with this world and you have to accept that the rest isn’t up to you anymore. Even if there’s business still left—”

“ _Business_ ,” Didier said, savagely twisting the word. He suddenly took a step towards Ricardo. The smoke whipped around behind him and above his head, molding itself into a fearsome headdress. “What do you know about dying? You, you order the dead around as if you’ve the right to. You wouldn’t have had any right when they were alive so why would you have it when they’re dead? What they deserve is peace—peace that they don’t always get, and that’s bad enough when they’re alive.”

“But they’re dead! It has to end sometime—it has to stop, or else how would we ever live?” Ricardo gasped. He doubled over with coughs, then forced himself to stand up. He could barely push aside enough of Didier’s power to get air; the swirling smoke made his head spin too much for him to concentrate on much more than that.

The smoke wrapped itself around Ricardo like a smothering blanket. Didier’s words curled likewise but with the edges of knives: “Dead or alive, if you think that makes a difference about who _lives_ , and who doesn’t, you don’t deserve your power.”

And then suddenly the smoke was gone, and Ricardo was on his hands and knees taking in great gulps of air. He saw something out of the corner of his eye and tried to look up at it, but a wheeze caught him in the gut.

On the second try he managed to raise his head. He made out the alley wall, and then a yellowish thing in a white puddle. The Hand of Glory in…Ricardo crawled over and sniffed at the puddle…in milk, and broken glass. Someone had poured milk on it to douse the flame.

“Kaká!” Hands patted at his back, then wrapped around his left arm and pulled him up. “Kaká? Are you all right? It’s Alberto, I saw a fire, I mean, a lot of smoke, and…”

“It wasn’t a fire,” Ricardo muttered. Between his recovering legs and Alberto, he got onto his feet. Then he looked around.

One of the demons was retrieving the Hand of Glory while the other two flanked Alberto. The car that had been parked on top of the exorcism site was gone. Ricardo remembered the beaten-up car that Didier had used in the morning, and how it hadn’t fit the man either. It’d been a different color, but car colors weren’t that difficult to change.

“Are you all right?” Alberto asked again.

“I think we can go now,” Ricardo eventually answered.

* * *

Alberto jumped, then turned around and nearly collapsed over the couch when he saw Gianluigi. “Oh, thank Go—sorry, I mean, I’m glad you’re finally home.”

Gianluigi paused, then finished shutting the door. Then he came over to the couch without taking off his coat. “Did something happen?”

“Well, I was…listen, please don’t blame the foxes, because it wasn’t their fault and actually, they said I shouldn’t go, and I made them let me, and it’s just…” Alberto giggled a little “…oh, it’s a long story. And I still don’t think I know what happened, and I was right _there_. And I’m just glad you’re home.”

After a moment, Gianluigi took off his coat. He folded it over the back of the couch, and then he came around and sat down by Alberto. From the look on his face he wanted badly to start snapping questions like he always did when he was worried, but he didn’t say anything. He just put his arms out straight and it looked awkward till Alberto figured out what Gianluigi was trying to do, and gratefully hugged the angel. Gianluigi laid his cheek on the top of Alberto’s head and wrapped his arms around Alberto, and things were okay. The Hand of Glory was back wherever Figo kept it, and Kaká had actually thanked the foxes, even if he’d looked a bit like Gianluigi doing it, and Alberto was home and he hadn’t screwed up anything real badly.

“I just want to go to sleep now,” Alberto murmured.

“All right,” Gianluigi said. He didn’t move, and Alberto didn’t try to move either. They just sat together on the couch.

* * *

Lip curled, Cristiano pulled his head back and settled himself on Ricardo’s sill. “Well, no wonder you didn’t want to invite me back here. It looks like a monk lives here.”

Ricardo refrained from replying. Instead he picked up another book and flipped to the index in the back.

“You don’t need to look up any extra wards, by the way. Well, against Drogba. I know you’re going to do up ones against me, even though I’m way nicer,” Cristiano said. His lower lip stuck out slightly more than his upper lip. Then he dropped his legs off the sill.

“Didier?” Ricardo snapped.

Cristiano pulled his legs back on the sill, bracing his feet against one corner and his back against the opposite jamb. He was grinning. “Yeah, Drogba. Way to make a first impression, you know. I had a hell of a time getting him to just leave town now that his job here’s done—I told him nobody was going to pay him for you and he said so what?”

“You—”

“Relax, it’s not like he takes souls or anything like that. Your hands are still sin-free,” Cristiano muttered, rolling his eyes.

Ricardo looked at his hands. Then he closed his book. “Why? I’m not…even very friendly towards you.”

“Yeah, really.” Cristiano turned an injured look towards Ricardo. Then he laughed and twisted so one leg slipped off the sill, on the outside side. “Because everybody needs something besides work. I like what I do—I really like it, but I can’t do it all the time. You’re not work.”

And then the rest of him slipped off and he was gone. He hadn’t fallen off the window; Ricardo didn’t need to walk over to know that. But there was something still on the sill and Ricardo went over to see what it was.

A paper bag. With cookies inside, and also a mobile phone. New but simple black case. After a moment, Ricardo picked the bag up. He shut the window, and then he went back to his desk. He stood there for a long time before he decided the wards would be strong enough for the night. The cookies he could save for the morning as well, when Lilian was back and would call to see how he was, and the phone…he would look at that in the morning again too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hand of Glory is real folklore stuff, down to having to douse it with milk. I believe it originated with European sources, but it's been integrated into other regional folklores.


	2. Vapor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Father Thuram and Kaká investigate a murder mystery.

When Ricardo was seventeen, he’d jumped into a swimming pool. He remembered the water that day had been a jewel-like blue and as it’d come towards him, he’d had the fleeting sense that he was jumping into a tinted glass pane. Then his body had cut through the surface. He’d barely felt that because the day had been so hot and the water had been blood-warm.

This time the water was even hotter, so hot that he gasped into it and the water flooded down his throat as he sank. It curled over his back and he twisted and he could feel it still curling around him, not so much like water as like fire, clinging with a searing touch. He kept falling. He knew he should have stopped by now—he _knew_ he should have hit the bottom, that hard _crack_ as his head snapped into his breast—but he kept falling.

The flames turned him over so he could see back where he had come, and far above was a small shimmering patch of light. The dark on either side was stretching out long fingers into it. Feathers. Great black feathers, from the wings that had swept around Ricardo. He twisted over, frantic, still gasping, and the straining outline of his mouth touched something soft and cool and—

—he woke. Ricardo breathed heavily and stared blindly out into his empty bedroom, his hands fisted into the sheets on either side of him. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and then breathed in as deeply as he could. Then he opened his eyes and got out of bed.

All of the wards were undisturbed. The phone Cristiano had left the last time he’d visited was still in the box Lilian had lent him, which should have rendered any spell on it ineffective. Besides, both Ricardo and Lilian had extensively tested the phone and had found no traces of magic in it. If anything had caused the dream Ricardo had just had, it wasn’t in his rooms.

Ricardo gripped the back of his desk chair and leaned on it till he could hear the wood creaking in protest. His hair fell into his eyes. When a shake didn’t take it away from there, he reluctantly freed one hand and pushed the strands away. They were damp with sweat. He began to put his hand back down, and then he stopped. He raised his fingers to his nose.

Cinders. Burnt blood.

He lowered his hand. His fingers were untouched, the same as they’d been when he’d gone to bed. For a while Ricardo gazed at them, as if that would bring forth the fire he’d smelled. Then he grimaced and turned back into his bedroom. It was still night but he began to dress himself for the day.

* * *

“This is Father Thuram,” the…fox demon said. Lilian knew they’d been introduced in the past but at the moment the demon’s name was shamefully escaping him. “He’s stepping in for Mr. Figo while he’s away.”

The man nodded stiffly. He pursed his lips and parted them, then glanced uncertainly at the fox demon. Then he belatedly took Lilian’s proffered hand. His grip was firm but it tightened quite quickly. “My name is Laurent Blanc. I’m…” he glanced at the fox demon again “…I was recommended Mr. Figo in a case of a suspicious death.”

“Well, I am not Luís, but I have some experience in some matters,” Lilian said calmly. “If you would like to tell me the details, I will do my best to help.”

Laurent nodded again. He was a good deal taller than Lilian but he hunched slightly at the shoulders so the immediate impression was not of a forceful personality. But the steady, intelligent gaze he turned on Lilian suggested that was merely due to the current circumstances and not a natural inclination. He gestured somewhat awkwardly with his hand at the empty space between them. “All right, well…so…”

The source for Laurent’s discomfort suddenly became clear. Lilian smiled reassuringly at the other man, then briefly scanned their surroundings. At the moment they were occupying the front step to Luís’ shop, but that would certainly not be a suitable setting for continuing, as well as causing some inconvenience to the fox-demons. A café down the block presented itself, and Laurent reacted with some relief when Lilian suggested they remove themselves to it.

“Are you…very familiar with the sort of special cases Lu—Mr. Figo handles?” Lilian asked, once they had their coffees.

Laurent grimaced, which would have been a sufficient response in itself. Then he abruptly gulped down his espresso. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and then signaled to the waiter for another while gazing out at the passersby on the street. “To be honest, no. I’d never…and I’m still not much of a believer. It’s only I’ve seen something that convinces me at least a few of the stories about things that creep in the night are true. But that’s not why I’m here—I’m here on behalf of a friend.”

Personally Lilian thought the coffee a bit scalding and had set it aside for the moment. Instead he was nibbling at the biscotti that had accompanied it. “Is he or she the deceased?”

“No,” Laurent said, looking back at Lilian. He spoke quietly, with a faint trace of disgust. Then he grimaced again. “I’m sorry. This is a little…odd for me.”

“I understand.” A few crumbs fell from the biscotti. Lilian swept them into a pile with his finger, then leaned over his coffee cup. Only a little steam was rising from it now and when he cautiously tried a sip, he found it quite drinkable.

The other man continued to fidget silently. He looked a few years older than Lilian, although his age sat lightly on him. His clothing and hair would attract little notice in respectable neighborhoods. He wore glasses with neat rectangular black rims, which he took off to polish. When he put them back on, he blinked hard as if somewhat unaccustomed to them. His gaze drifted to just below Lilian’s chin, then sharpened. “You’re a priest?” Before Lilian could answer, Laurent sighed. “No, right, he called you ‘Father’…and so you…handle this sort of thing? It doesn’t seem like something for priests—well, I suppose the confessional, but I’m not here to—”

“I have dedicated my life to furthering the welfare of others,” Lilian said calmly. “In some respects that has taken me to some odd places, but I believe it is all in keeping with my beliefs. One must work according to the gifts one is given, and mine happen to be well-suited to unusual matters.”

Laurent abruptly smiled. It was quick but genuinely warm. “Oh, I’m sorry. I think you misunderstand. I’ve no problem with you being a priest with an interest in unorthodox issues. I’m no theologian and will leave that debate to those more qualified to undertake it. It’s more that…this is a matter of murder. If I didn’t already know the police wouldn’t listen, I’d prefer them. Part of what I want is to see justice done, not just to have things settled.”

“Murder?”

“I’m sure of it.” Then Laurent picked up the fresh cup the waiter had just brought him. He blew on it, then drank deeply. “Proof, on the other hand, is a problem.”

“I see.” Lilian glanced at his watch. By now Kaká should have arrived at the bookshop and been redirected here. It was rather unlike him to be late without notice, and as far as Lilian knew the other man had no other pressing errands this morning. “And I understand, and while I cannot act as a policeman, as you point out, I would still like to offer my help in perhaps sorting out the events, so you would at least have the knowledge you need to proceed further.”

For a moment Laurent stared into his coffee. Then he set the cup aside and looked at Lilian. He folded his arms against the table and leaned forward on them. “Well, at risk of sounding a little melodramatic, it’s a locked-room mystery with a twist. At least, I believe there’s a twist.”

“A locked-room murder?” Lilian repeated. Then he smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry if I sounded a little pleased. I do take the matter seriously, but I’ve always been rather fond of such things as presented in novels.”

“You might as well take your chance to be amused,” Laurent replied. He shrugged diffidently at Lilian’s sharp look. “I’ll confess now that I wasn’t particularly close to the dead man. We had no ill blood, as far as I know, but I’m more concerned for my friend, Fabien. He owns the building where it happened.”

“And where is this building?” Lilian asked.

Laurent half-turned. At first Lilian thought the man had been surprised by something outside, but Laurent’s movements quickly made it apparent he was instead searching for something. Then Laurent pointed out a crossroads about two blocks away. “Down there four blocks and then over five.”

“A decent walk, but I’ve not had one yet today, so that will be most welcome.” Lilian gestured for the bill, then glanced at Laurent. “If that would be permissible? I would like to see the location, at least.”

“I can do better than that. The police finished yesterday and I have a key, so we can see the very room,” Laurent said.

“Very well, then…Kaká.” After a pause, Lilian finished rising from his seat. He waved the other man forward, then gestured towards Laurent. “This is Mr. Blanc, Kaká”

Kaká had looked a little harried when he’d first entered, but he smoothed over his expression for his handshake with Laurent. “I’m Kaká, Lilian’s assistant. Pleased to meet you. Lilian, I’m sorry I’m late.”

“We haven’t gotten very far, only the bare details and an invitation to go see the scene,” Lilian explained. Then he looked at Laurent.

After a moment’s consideration, Laurent got up from his seat and agreed that Kaká would come along. Then the waiter arrived with the bill and Laurent took it, apparently with the intention of paying for the whole sum. It suddenly occurred to Lilian that he and Luís hadn’t discussed the financial aspect of their arrangement. He knew Luís did charge for his services, but Lilian normally would not take more than perhaps a meal in return.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Kaká repeated, interrupting Lilian’s thoughts. He had edged between Laurent and Lilian so Lilian had little chance now of stopping Laurent. “I had to—I was trying to find Cristiano.”

“Cristiano?” Lilian said, surprised. He’d known that Kaká occasionally conversed with the demon—though he’d yet to meet Cristiano himself—but as far as he was aware, it was still a fairly hostile relationship in Kaká’s view.

Kaká looked grim. “I think he might have tried to affect my dreams. But never mind. I couldn’t find him so he’s not in the city now. It can wait till we’ve taken care of this case.”

“Are you all right?” Lilian asked.

“I’m—yes.” A slight flush colored Kaká’s cheeks. Then he looked away, tugging at his shirt-collar. He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m fine. I’m sorry for losing track of the time when I was looking for him.”

Lilian shook his head. Over Kaká’s shoulder he could see that Laurent had paid the waiter and was now looking expectantly at them. The coffees hadn’t been expensive but before they went much further, he’d have to discuss the fee issue with Laurent. And he’d have to remember to ask Kaká again about Cristiano and this dream. At the moment they hadn’t the time, and it was clear that Kaká also lacked the appetite to tell Lilian what had happened. “No matter, you’re here now. Now, shall we go?”

* * *

“Fabien was renting this flat to Mr. Vieira,” Laurent said, leading them into the room. He allowed them a few moments to take it in, then headed for an inner door on the left. Once he’d unlocked it, he went inside without an interruption in his explanation or a backwards look; they were clearly expected to follow. “We were all in school together, but neither Fabien nor I had heard much from Patrick in years. Then he ran into Fabien at the house of a mutual acquaintance and mentioned he needed rooms for a month or two, and Fabien offered this place. He inherited it from a relative and uses it mostly as a winter retreat.”

The building was situated in one of the older quarters, and if the décor was in fact original to the house and not reproductions, then it’d been built at least a hundred years ago. It looked well-cared for, with thick carpeting that sank slightly beneath the foot and elegant—if somewhat heavy-bodied to Lilian’s eye—mahogany and teak furniture.

“Someone’s done spells here,” Kaká said, tone low but surprised. When Lilian looked at him, the other man was gazing fixedly at a ball of polished, clear crystal sitting on a sideboard. It was about the size of a man’s head and was resting on a small stand, and did resemble a rather pricy version of the scrying stones used by fortunetellers. “But nothing significant.”

Nodding, Lilian proceeded into the next room, where Laurent stood waiting. The room behind appeared to have been used as a sitting room, while this one had tall shelves crowded with books lining the walls. It had no other furniture except for an odd-looking stall positioned in the center of the room. The stall was roughly the size and shape of an old-fashioned phone booth, and was made of solid wood. It had a door that, oddly, only had a handle on the inside.

Laurent noticed Lilian’s interest and went up to the stall. He put his hand on the door and then pointed at the frame. “Be careful with this. See the rubber lining? It’s air-tight.”

“Completely air-tight?” Lilian asked.

“Near enough.” A peculiar twist decorated Laurent’s mouth as he spoke. He leaned against the door and gestured inside. “This is where they found him.”

Lilian came over and carefully peered inside. It had a low shelf or seat across the back of the stall, but other than that, the stall was empty.

“He was sort of kneeling on that—” Laurent pointed at the seat “—facing the wall. His face was pressed into the corner. There wasn’t anything in there besides him.”

“And he was dead?” Lilian asked.

Laurent nodded. Then he put his hand to his chin. He looked quickly around, then let out a small ‘ah’ and went over to a nearby shelf. While he was busy there, Lilian took another look at the stall. It was certainly an odd structure—in certain respects it put Lilian in mind of a confessional. Or of some of the isolation chambers the Church had disgracefully employed during the Inquisition and similar movements. But at any rate, it lacked any trace of the supernatural.

“What’s this?” Kaká had finally come in from the other room and had walked up beside Lilian to look at the stall. He frowned at it, then rubbed at his right eye.

For all that Kaká flattered Lilian, of the two of them it was the younger man who had a natural bounty of gifts. Lilian had started out with only a knack for spellwork and what his family had always referred to as ‘clear sight,’ and by discipline and a deep hunger for learning he had managed to cultivate his small talent. But he knew very well the difference between his abilities and those of someone such as Kaká, who had magic flowing with his very breath. The difficulty for Kaká was in controlling what came instinctively; the difficulty for Lilian was in converting his rigid diligence to intuition, which was fluid by its very nature.

“For séances, perhaps,” Lilian suggested.

Laurent looked up from the bookshelf. “Patrick had taken up an interest in those sorts of things, apparently. You see, here’s the sort of books he brought in with him.”

He took a volume off the shelf and then handed it to Kaká, who only glanced at the cover before quickly passing it to Lilian. As Lilian took the book, he saw Kaká reach into a trouser-pocket with the hand he’d used to touch the book.

Kaká was likely trying to find his saints’ medals, given what the book was: a medieval treatise on the summoning of demons. Lilian leafed briefly through the book, then gave it back to Laurent. It was in very good condition, looking hardly touched since its binding.

“But there’s no…no magic in it,” Kaká suddenly muttered. “I can’t feel anything special about it.”

Lilian began to look at him, only to have his attention called away by Laurent’s sudden exclamation. The other man came away from the bookshelf with a bit of paper in hand. “These are my notes on what the police doctor said,” he said.

“Who found the body?” Lilian asked.

“Oh, right.” Laurent blinked, then removed his glasses and used the tail of his shirt to polish the lenses. Then he set them back on his nose and looked at his notes. “Patrick was ordering all sorts of things besides the book—I can show you those in a moment—and he would have them delivered here. He had a morning delivery and the man found the front door open, so he went inside. The door to this room was locked, but the man said he heard strange noises inside. They were alarming enough for him to call the police, who called me for the keys since Fabien was out of the town that day.”

Although he appeared to be listening, Kaká had wandered over to the bookcases and was perusing their titles from a cautious distance. It was possible he had sensed something Lilian couldn’t, so for the time being Lilian left the other man to his reading. “And so you were here for the initial investigations,” he said to Laurent.

“For them and for most of the later ones. You see—Fabien and Patrick had had a bit of a spat earlier in the week. It wasn’t of much account, just about some complaints from the neighbors about Patrick, but the police think it’s suspicious and keep questioning him.” Grim amusement flickered behind Laurent’s glasses. “He had some problems at first proving he wasn’t nearby the night before, when they think it happened, but he’s cleared them up since. I had a good alibi, as they say, and hadn’t argued with Patrick in front of the neighbors, so they haven’t paid any attention to me.”

After a moment, Lilian stepped forward. He spread his hands. “I have no suspicions at this point, but for the sake of completeness—”

“Oh, no, it’s a fair question. I was with my girlfriend—it was her birthday and we were celebrating it for most of the night.” Laurent looked slightly embarrassed, but soon recovered. “As for Fabien, he had a business trip scheduled for the day after the murder—that was why he wasn’t in when they needed the keys. Originally he’d planned to leave in the morning but he moved it up and left in the early evening because he’d heard the transport workers might strike at his destination. That was well before the last time anyone saw Patrick alive, which was at a nearby bakery just after nine.”

“Was anyone besides Mr. Vieira known to be in the house that night?” Lilian asked.

Laurent shook his head. “No, it was only Patrick. And as far as anyone knows, only he, myself and Fabien have keys. Patrick kept an appointments book and he didn’t have anyone down to see him, and the neighbors didn’t see anyone come by. They’re the sort who would notice, so I believe them.”

“I see. And now we come to your notes.” Lilian smiled when Laurent looked blankly at him. “I apologize for interrupting before, but I wanted to have the setting straight before we arrived at the…reason for it.”

Comprehension came into Laurent’s eyes. He grimaced at himself, then glanced at his paper. “No, I’m sorry, I should be more—I’ve puzzled over this long enough to know how to tell you about it, you’d think. Anyway, this is what the doctors said. They claim Patrick died of asphyxiation—I know you’re thinking of the door, but I forgot to mention it was open when they found him. It can’t be opened except from the inside. And there wasn’t a mark on him to show that somebody had forced him or anything like that. Well, except…”

Up till now Laurent had been speaking with the crisp, certain tone of one who knew his footing well. He paused for a moment, staring at Lilian with an uncertainty in his eyes that verged on fear. Then he shook his head and put back his shoulders.

“When they autopsied him, they found some very strange burns, but on the _inside_. In his mouth and throat, and into his lungs. They’re not sure what caused them,” Laurent eventually said, a little more slowly. “He didn’t have any burns on the outside.”

Lilian had personally seen one case of true spontaneous human combustion, but it and all the similar cases he knew of had always had extensive burns on the outside and inside. “How serious were these burns?”

“Bad, but the doctors insist that it was asphyxiation that killed Patrick.” Laurent offered the notes to Lilian. “They also swabbed down the entire stall, but I haven’t heard whether they’ve found traces of anything. I assume not, since they told us to keep it but left it here. That’s about it for the police.”

To Lilian it seemed that Laurent had already related everything he had written down, but when he refused the notes, Kaká stepped forward and said politely that he’d like to see them. After a moment’s hesitation, Laurent handed them over. Then he asked if they still wanted to see the materials the dead man had been receiving. When Lilian assented, Laurent led them into a bedroom and then into a small study branching off the bedroom.

The study was a veritable warehouse, down to the half-unpacked boxes that were pushed into one corner. It was an odd mixture of quack and genuine materials for practicing magic; moreover, while most people who studied the subject had a preference for certain areas, Lilian could make out no such specialization here. Things such as dried mandrake roots for fertility were boxed up besides I Ching divination stalks, and what appeared to be a wolf-pelt was draped over a Styrofoam box that according to its label had once contained a frozen sheep’s heart. He didn’t wish to think ill of the dead, but for all appearances it seemed as if Vieira had been buying anything and everything offered to him.

He turned to Laurent, who had stayed back in the bedroom. “Do you know what Vieira’s goals were for these? What he was trying to do?”

“Not really,” Laurent said. “I only saw him a few times. Fabien saw him once a week—Patrick was paying by the week and would come over to drop off the rent—and he said Patrick was working with another man. Patrice Evra. But the two of them had a falling-out two weeks ago, and Evra hasn’t been seen since.”

“Have the police tried to find him?” Lilian asked.

Laurent smiled sourly. “No. I think they made some superficial inquiries, but they’ve written him off as some hustler who left town when Patrick found him out. I don’t want to skew your inquiry, but personally I’d put my bets on Evra.”

“Why?”

“Because—because it’s something I feel. I’m sorry, that’s not very reasonable and I’ve asked you here to try and find some sense in all of this,” Laurent said after a moment. He moved his shoulders with frank chagrin, but the certainty remained in his eyes. “I met the man once, here. I told you I don’t really believe in the supernatural—I told him that and he seemed to find it funny. And quite irritating. He’s a smart man with a smart mouth, and he told me I might have a university degree and a golden chair, but when it came to _his_ field I was a blind baby.”

Lilian half-noticed that Kaká had left them, probably to go back to the room with the stall. “I see.”

“Wait, there’s a bit more.” For a moment Laurent’s sureness wavered, and though he was looking straight at Lilian, he was seeing a different place and a different time. The lenses of his glasses clouded over with a grey mist, and out of that a hulking dark figure slouched, as if it’d come up right behind Lilian. Then it vanished, just as someone’s faint shout of terror echoed in Lilian’s ears. His glasses clear again, Laurent was looking soberly at Lilian. “The thing is…I have a degree, and I am a professor, but when I woke up that morning, I didn’t have a chair at my university. Right after I ran into this Evra, I got a call from a colleague that I’d been named to one, and I was confirmed to it shortly afterward. I didn’t know about it, so Evra couldn’t have. And then—I think he sent something to me.”

“I suppose from what you’ve said, it would not have been an apology,” Lilian said.

Laurent smiled thinly. That dark figure slipped quickly over his glasses again. “No. It was—it was at night, and I was walking down a street with nobody else around. It could have been a shadow, but I thought…I really thought it might be something out of a…a horror film.”

“Did he ever say what sort of field he was in?” Lilian asked after a few moments had passed.

The other man blinked hard, then shook himself as if slowly awakening from a dream. Then he took off his glasses and wiped them with his shirt-tail. “Not to me or Fabien, but the police let slip that he’d been arrested before for fraud.”

“Do you have a photo of him?” When Laurent shook his head, Lilian cleared his throat and then looked ruefully at the other man. “This will sound suspicious, but did he leave any belongings of his behind? A piece of clothing, or something he made…”

“Is this the unusual part of your services?” Laurent asked, not without humor. Then he put his hand to his chin and thought. “I don’t know about anything he did in here, but I think they found a receipts book in Vieira’s desk. There might be something he signed if that’d do…but I’m not sure what the police left behind. I can look.”

A signature would do excellently, Lilian told the man, and Laurent promptly began to search the bedroom. After some effort, they turned up a stained invoice with a signature purporting to be that of ‘Patrice’ on it. Lilian took out his pocket prayer book and carefully slid the paper in between the pages. Then he thanked Laurent for showing them the place and told the man he would consider it all and contact him in a few days. He also raised the matter of fees, only to be told that Laurent had already paid Luís. A matter to take up with Luís upon his return, then. Lilian collected Kaká and then they exited the building.

* * *

“Figo did do a quick check to see if any demons or something serious like that were involved before he left, so they already got that,” the fox demon was telling Lilian. The demon sounded faintly offended at the idea that Figo could do something improper. “And he made sure you could cover it. He didn’t have to do that—he could’ve just stopped at the check.”

“I didn’t mean to imply anything unpleasant,” Lilian said. “I do understand and respect that he has a different way of handling his business than I, but I’m simply unclear right now what that way is. It’s my fault for not asking before he left.”

Only half-listening to them, Ricardo stood on the opposite end of the stoop and looked down the street. Then he shook his head. For a few minutes he tried to concentrate on the case and to see if he could make out a solution, but he finally gave up the effort as wasted. It was strange—magic was clearly involved but not, as far as either Ricardo or Lilian could tell, in the man’s death itself—but the difficulty of solving the mystery wasn’t the issue for Ricardo.

At least, he had no way of knowing if it was, because he couldn’t focus on the facts for more than a few seconds. The dream he’d had earlier was still clinging to him, and despite the passage of time he wasn’t any less disturbed than he had been when he’d first woken. Adding to his discomfort was the fact that he hadn’t been able to find Cristiano—not just the demon, but any trace of the demon in the dream. He’d told Lilian he thought it was Cristiano and he still did, but at the moment Ricardo had to admit that that was still an unfounded suspicion.

The wings…they’d closed around him and Ricardo hadn’t felt frightened. Instead he’d—he’d _wanted_ that. And the heat of them…and the water surrounding him…

Ricardo grimaced and put his hand to his temple, then to his neck. He tugged out his rosary and was beginning to count the beads when he realized that Lilian was speaking to him. He started about, then stuffed his rosary back under his shirt and looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” he said, his face hot. “I—I didn’t hear.”

“I said that since Figo was quite sure no demons were involved, I think we should look to see exactly what Vieira was trying to do,” Lilian repeated after a moment. As usual, his tone was gentle and non-accusatory, and made Ricardo feel a thousand times more at fault than any scolding would have. “I also need to think on what we saw—there was quite a bit and I don’t think I have it all as it should be in my head. Let’s walk back to the seminary.”

Lilian’s calmness smoothed away some of the jangling in Ricardo’s soul, and for some time they went over the scene together, discussing each detail. The books, which Lilian had left to Ricardo to survey, were just as jumbled in topic and collectively uninformative as the roomful of supplies had been. The strange stall could have been put to any of a dozen distinct uses, and the faint signs of magical practice that Ricardo had sensed were far from enough to make any determinations as to what the dead man had been doing. In the end, they agreed, the best approach was probably to find out more about the decedent’s work-partner, Evra.

“I can understand Mr. Blanc’s disappointment with the police, but I think I’ll try inquiring there before we proceed to any castings,” Lilian told Ricardo as they neared the seminary gates. “With some luck, we may not need to resort to any special tricks.”

“All right.” In all honesty, Ricardo doubted that Lilian would have any success there; Lilian had remarkable powers of persuasion, but Blanc had come across to Ricardo as a persistent, resourceful man and he hadn’t succeeded. “Are you only asking about Evra?”

A priest came out of the seminary’s door, saw them and hailed Lilian, who responded. Then Lilian bent a curious look on Ricardo. “Who else do you think we should ask about?”

“Barthez did have a motive, according to Blanc. And Blanc himself might have an interest besides helping his friend,” Ricardo said. He put his hand on the gate. “I know he doesn’t seem like a man who’d commit murder, but it would be prudent to ask anyway. We’ve only heard his side of the story.”

Oddly enough, Lilian responded with a broad smile. He reached out and touched Ricardo on the shoulder, then opened the gate. “Kaká, we’ll have an empiricist out of you yet.”

Ricardo blinked. Then he followed Lilian into the courtyard, turning once he was inside to shut and latch the gate. “Will you need me for the police?”

“No, I don’t think so, though you’re welcome to come,” Lilian said. His voice slowed a little. “If you’d rather take some time this afternoon for yourself, I would have no objection.”

“I…” Ricardo dropped his gaze “…about this morning. I am sorry.”

For a few moments Lilian regarded him. Then the other man drew a little closer. “Has this incubus injured—”

“I don’t even know if it’s him,” Ricardo blurted out. He combed his hair back from his eyes, then tugged absently at it. He could feel a flush rising into his cheeks. “I know what I said earlier—that was because—because of the nature of the dream. But I’ve nothing else to say it was him…except why else would I have a dream like that?”

“You have stepped away from the vows,” Lilian said after a short pause.

Ricardo glanced up in surprise, only to find Lilian looking at him with what seemed very much like bemusement. A hot flash of anger went through Ricardo, followed quickly by shame; Lilian had done far too much for him to deserve rage. And then, unexpectedly, Ricardo saw the humor in it. He couldn’t enjoy it much, but he could nod and smile. “I know. I’ve been thinking for a few days about how odd it is. I’ve changed my life completely and yet…there’s so much that’s the same. It’s hard to…I think it makes it harder, because I can pretend nothing’s happened most of the time and then it’s suddenly—different.”

“I think it would be an error to expect that you would switch lives as if they were different pairs of shoes,” Lilian replied. “At any rate, even new shoes take some time before they and you become fitted to each other.”

“Thank you,” Ricardo said simply. Lilian deserved more, but all he would ever take was Ricardo’s sincerity.

Lilian merely smiled. Then his eyes sparked. “It wasn’t about Cristiano, was it? Your dream?”

“ _No_ ,” Ricardo said forcefully, instinctively. Then he paused. Even considering it more soberly, he was still oddly certain of his answer, and when he had very little to go on. “No, it wasn’t. But…I think I’ll be in the chapel for a while. Then after that I’ll be in my rooms, so if you need me, you know where to send to.”

To that Lilian readily assented, and then they took their leave of each other. Ricardo deviated slightly from his stated plan to get a drink from the seminary kitchens, but after that he did go to the chapel.

At this time of day it was empty, although the laughter and footsteps of people crossing the surrounding courtyard drifted inside. It was a sunny day and the light streaming through the stained glass painted intricate patterns across the walls and floors and pews, to the point that it was difficult to find a seat that wasn’t dappled with color. Ricardo finally found one in the back left corner.

For a while he did pray, mostly for patience. Then he simply leaned back in the pew and let his gaze wander about the chapel. He did have to talk to Cristiano, although now he’d changed his mind about the topic of their discussion. As for the dream—it wasn’t the dream itself that had been uncomfortable. Realizing that perhaps was responsible for the largest part of Ricardo’s current discomfort, but there was something else as well.

“I see you still keep the rituals, if not the faith.” Didier smiled pleasantly from the aisle, and held out his hands with his empty palms out. He wore a light-colored suit that the light made into a rainbow, but his smile was even brighter. “I apologize for the other night. I lost my temper.” He paused, then gestured at the pew. “May I?”

After a long moment, Ricardo gave the man a reluctant nod. Among the other changes to his life, he’d still not fully recovered his powers from—and he would admittedly have a difficult time taking on Didier on his own. But this was hallowed ground and had its own protections.

Didier came into the pew up to the halfway point, then sat down. Except for the rustle of his clothes, he moved without any sound. “You’ve heard of me already, but for the sake of manners, I am Didier.”

“Kaká,” Ricardo said. He pressed his hand against the pew and levelly met Didier’s raised brows. “It’s a nickname, the one most people know me by.”

“Very well, Kaká. Your friend came to see me, after my head had cooled,” Didier said.

“He’s not—”

An amused smile flashed across Didier’s face. “I was wondering. You didn’t seem the sort to keep his company.”

“I’m,” Ricardo started abruptly. Then he turned away, and looked straight ahead at the altar. “I am sorry that I didn’t ask more questions before I did my exorcism.”

Didier made a strange sort of sound, a kind of rumbling that lacked any anger. It was the sound a panther might make while thinking, if animals were capable of higher thought. “Well, I was upset because he was a friend, and it cost me a good deal to take him to where he belonged. But you were only doing your job, and that wasn’t my business.”

“My job isn’t exorcisms. That’s just a tool. It’s not a job. It’s my purpose,” Ricardo said under his breath, more to himself than to the other man. He stared at the altar for another moment, then looked back at Didier. “What do you mean, take him where he belonged? I sent him—I should have sent him to that, and then it’s not in our hands anymore.”

“Are you God now?” Didier asked, laughing. He shook his head, then reached out and lightly slapped the back of the pew before them. The sound ricocheted through the chapel before fading. “It _was_ wrong for me to be mad at you, if only because you’re so ignorant. Listen, if that was the case, then how would demons come and go? Or angels? And there are so many others who cross between.”

Ricardo bit the inside of his mouth against his rising annoyance. “Yes, they can, but they don’t have souls.”

“Really?” Didier shook his head again. “Tell me, Kaká, how you’re so sure.”

“Tell me why you should have the right to take souls from their proper judgments,” Ricardo snapped. “Are you God?”

The humor suddenly drained out of Didier’s face. With it went the light around him, the dapples of color, so his clothes became a terrible blankness, so blank that the mind’s eye began to paint memories on it out of sheer desperation. They were not pleasant memories.

“I am not,” Didier said quietly. “I am a man. But I am a man who cares for justice, who has cared enough about it to go searching for it, in all the corners of this world and beyond. Even with God. You cannot know the nature of justice merely by sitting there and looking at it, and having an opinion. And if God tells you that that is so, then He is a liar, and you a fool.”

Then he began to rise. For a moment Ricardo’s mouth was dry and empty. Then anger rushed into him and he pushed himself to his feet. “What if you’re wrong? How do you know you’ve found justice?”

Didier already had his back to Ricardo, but the man paused. Time stretched on as he stood at the far end of the pew and Ricardo at the near, the both of them turned the same way. Then, slowly, Didier looked over his shoulder. His eyes were still lit with anger, but there was something else in them too. Something cooler, more considering.

“Yes, I may be wrong,” he finally said. “Then someday someone will come for me, and I’ll meet them on my feet. But that cannot be enough to stop me from asking for justice.” He turned back, and began to walk out of the church. “I told Cristiano that I would not come for you now, but I wanted to know if I might have to later. I don’t think so. You’re not cruel, even if it was cruel to leave him his wings.”

Ricardo stared. Then he swerved out of the pew and ran down the aisle. At the door he caught himself, breathless. Didier was already gone.

* * *

At the police station Lilian fortuitously ran into a detective he knew from some Church-sponsored socials with which he’d helped. The man knew the Vieira case very well and even allowed Lilian to look at the coroner’s report, which had just been finalized. Most of it Lilian had already heard from Laurent, unfortunately, and enlightened Lilian no more than before.

The detective did have some new news on Evra, who’d been arrested in Sicily for speeding and then transferred up here for questioning on the Vieira case and on some other, unrelated charges. He would be in custody for at least the next few days, but the detective was pessimistic on being able to keep Evra longer than that, as they lacked concrete evidence.

“What are the other charges?” Lilian asked.

“Fraud,” the detective promptly said. “He’s got a few schemes that we’ve seen him use, but they’re all mostly about promising rich idiots that he’ll use witchcraft or something like that to reveal things like stock tips, gambling outcomes. Oh, and there was the blackmail one. He’d find someone who’d had a mysterious death in the family and tell them he knew what’d really happened.”

Lilian reached into his coat and took out his prayer book. He turned to the pages where he’d put the invoice. “And when his predictions failed, they blamed him?”

The detective hesitated, then shook his head. “No, that’s the odd thing. They all say the predictions would come out. The thing was, they’d never quite work the way people wanted—somebody winning a horse race would get beaten up by the bookie for cheating, or if he told them who the killer was, it’d all end in another death.” Then the man’s eyes brightened and he smiled contemptuously. “Of course, that makes it look like things came true because Evra maybe helped them along. No magic there, though I heard he puts on a good show. Lots of fog and what do they call it, ectoplasm.”

“Fog?”

“Oh, you know.” The detective gestured vaguely. “Like you see in clu—er, well, Father, if you’ve been to a scare house, like for the Americans’ Halloween…”

“I see,” Lilian said, blinking hard. He closed his prayer book and put it back into his coat. “Well, thank you very much for answering my questions.”

“Would you like to talk to him?” the detective suddenly asked. “He’s not under tight security, and I can ask.”

After a moment’s thought, Lilian said that he would.

* * *

The meeting with Didier had left Ricardo a little shaken and had ruined the chapel’s peace for him, so he went up to his rooms. Lilian hadn’t left any messages, so for the time being Ricardo had nothing that needed doing. He made himself a cup of tea and drank half of it, trying to imagine Lilian talking him through his mood. Then he put the cup down. He gazed into it for a few seconds, then turned on his heel and went to his desk.

Ricardo took out the box with the mobile in it and opened it. He picked up the phone. It was a flip model and opened smoothly at the flick of his thumb. The display glowed brightly, then dimmed; he half-noticed that the battery was only partly charged.

Only one number was in the Contacts list. After a moment’s hesitation, Ricardo called it.

*Hey, you used it!* was Cristiano’s greeting. *About time. It’s been what, two days?*

“Where are you?” Ricardo asked sharply.

Cristiano didn’t immediately answer. In the background were shouts and loud but indecipherable talking, mostly in masculine voices. The occasional high-pitched shrilling cut through the noises, and then once there was the unmistakable crackling of a public announcement system. *I’m in Portugal,* Cristiano eventually said. *Been here all day. It’s Sporting’s first match of the season.*

By then Ricardo had figured it out but hadn’t quite accepted the explanation. He still found it too—too _mundane_ , but Cristiano sounded genuinely puzzled and Ricardo couldn’t detect any fakery in what he was hearing. “And last night?”

*Also here. Sorry if you missed me, but even if I like you, I’ve got other things to do.* Cristiano paused to scream abuse at the referee. It was remarkably…it was _exactly_ what an angered Sporting fan would say. *Why, what’s up?*

Ricardo breathed in and looked at the far wall. Then he put his hand on his desk. He bit his lip and moved his hand to one of the drawers. He jarred the handle a little but the drawer was locked—he always kept that one locked—and then breathed out. The truth was the truth and only harm came from running from it. “Nothing to do with you. I…never mind.”

*Okay, but only because we’ve a freekick coming up just off the penalty box,* Cristiano said. *You’d better not throw away the phone. It’s paid up through the end of the year.*

For a moment Ricardo was at a loss. “You didn’t leave me a charger.”

*I didn’t! Shit. I knew I forgot something. Well, I’ll bring it when I’m back in town tomorrow, okay?*

Cristiano hung up before Ricardo could provide any sort of reply. The sudden lack of noise made Ricardo start. He took down the phone and looked at it, then flipped it shut. Then he started to put it back into the magic-blocking box. He paused, shook his head and instead set it to the side of the box. And then he took out his keys and unlocked the desk drawer he’d tugged a moment ago.

Inside was a grey feather. Ricardo took it out and held the end between his forefinger and thumb. Then, gingerly, he sniffed the tip.

Someone knocked at the door. Ricardo hissed and jerked his hand down, then hissed again as the feather slipped out of his hands. He breathed out heavily when it merely floated safely down onto the desk. Then he carefully locked it back in the drawer and went to the door.

Outside was one of the students with a message from Lilian. He wanted to see Ricardo back at the house, where they’d be meeting Blanc and possibly Barthez.

* * *

Kaká arrived first and was waiting for Lilian on the doorstep. He seemed somewhat more at ease than he had been earlier, but the eyes he raised to Lilian were still troubled. For a moment he looked as if he wished to ask a question. Then he frowned and peered more closely at Lilian. “You’ve found out something,” he said.

It was not a question. Lilian nodded, then turned to look down the street. A car was approaching and inside it he could just make out Laurent’s glasses and another man. “Yes, I believe so. But I think I shall tell this once.”

“I didn’t bring anything with me besides my rosary and my saints’ medals. The message only said to come,” Kaká said doubtfully.

“Oh, I don’t think that anything else will be necessary,” Lilian replied. He watched Laurent park the car at the curb. “There’s very little that is supernatural about this.”

A few minutes later, Laurent and Barthez were staring at Lilian with as much disbelief as Kaká had had on the stoop. “Not supernatural?” Barthez said. “But—the burns, and the locked door, and the—all these things Patrick had been buying—”

“Yes, indeed. His purchases. Many of them are indeed connected with unorthodox practices. But they don’t figure in his death.” Lilian paused and moved back a few steps. They had retired to the room with the stall in it and as before, the stall door was wide open. It swung away from Lilian’s touch. “I have to admit I thought they did at first, but I’m afraid I was a little biased because of the cases I see these days. They never call us in for the doubtful ones now…but when I was just starting out, more often than not I’d find only a disgruntled amateur magician. The average ‘supernatural case’ normally is nothing more than an ordinary trick or two, mixed in with some showmanship.”

A glimmer of understanding came into Laurent’s eyes. “Evra had a reputation for fraud. But—I did think that at first but with what I saw—”

“No, he is gifted, there is no doubt about that,” Lilian said. He let go of the door and took out his prayer book. After extracting the invoice, he handed it to Laurent. “There are certain ways of telling…by examining things such people have touched or made, even if they’re ordinary is one, and that is why I asked you for this earlier. As it happens I didn’t need it. I met him.”

At that both Laurent and Barthez broke in with surprised questions, and it took a little time for Lilian to calm them enough for him to explain how he’d come to the police station. Kaká asked no questions, but Lilian could sense some disapproval from the other man; since their last case in Brazil, Kaká had been wary of allowing Lilian to confront anything remotely dangerous on his own. He meant well, and Lilian appreciated the sentiment, but sometimes Lilian was tempted to remind Kaká that he had been investigating such things for far longer than they had known each other.

“Then the police still won’t do anything about this,” Laurent finally said, disgusted. “They actually have him and they won’t do anything about this.”

Lilian nodded, then drew in his breath. “I have a question for you. You told me before that you wanted not only to help Mr. Barthez here, but to also have justice. Can I ask you what you mean by that?”

Barthez took some offense and began to defend Laurent against some implied accusation he perceived in Lilian’s words, but Laurent interrupted him. Laurent regarded Lilian for some moments before he answered in a slow, grave voice. “It’s true that my stake in this seems more personal than anything else—mostly clearing Fabien’s name. I didn’t care much for Patrick, and I’ll admit, I even had my suspicions that what he was up to with his experiments…perhaps it’s better for the rest of us that he was stopped. But that doesn’t square his death. We’re all flawed, but in things like justice we have something perfect to—to strive for. To measure ourselves against, and see where the flaws are. Without it I don’t see how we could ever fix our problems, because we wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Then is it justice you want, or some truth that lets you understand what happened?” Lilian asked.

Laurent had an answer ready, but he shut his mouth as the words were escaping it. He looked questioningly at Lilian.

“I spoke to Evra for a few minutes. He was rather like you had described to me, and was not very forthcoming, but he told me that Patrick had asked him for help in doing ill to some business enemies. Patrick wanted information he could use against them,” Lilian eventually went on. “Evra can talk to spirits. It’s one of the more common abilities, and in truth not very impressive to watch, but I believe he dressed it up with props such as magician’s tricks, fake fog and so on.”

“Then it is supernatural,” Laurent said.

Lilian shook his head. “No. You see, the problem with Evra’s type of gift—with any gift of this kind, really—is that you have a price for being able to see a little bit more than the rest, and you have to pay it, one way or the other. Evra’s way has been to deflect it to those seeking his help, so that they experience misfortunes that should rightly be his.”

Barthez had been listening intently, but from the expression on his face he didn’t quite comprehend what he was hearing. “So you’re saying something was coming for Evra, and instead he let it kill Patrick?”

“No. No, that wasn’t what killed Mr. Vieira, though I’ve no doubt that it contributed to his and Evra’s quarrel. What Evra told me was that Vieira became tired of watching him do all the magic and wanted to learn it for himself. He was willing to pay, so Evra pretended to teach him. In reality, it’s very difficult to get even minor spells to work unless you have some innate power to begin with, and Vieira didn’t,” Lilian explained. “It was Evra who was actually making them work, but he didn’t let Vieira in on that. There’s the fraud. But then they fell out.”

A sharp breath came from Laurent. He was staring hard at Lilian. “And Patrick still believed he could do…but he couldn’t.”

“It wasn’t only that,” Kaká said. “Communicating with spirits doesn’t require any tools. Anything Evra showed Mr. Vieira was mere window-dressing.”

“Worse than that, in fact. Evra can be vindictive, as you’ve noted—” Lilian nodded at Laurent “—and I don’t think it would be beyond him to instruct Vieira in a ‘spell’ that would in fact be fatal. I understand from the police that he’s used dry ice in his ‘act’ before…”

“Then he did kill Patrick,” Laurent said. He snapped his fingers, then turned to Barthez, who’d asked for an explanation almost in the same moment. “Dry ice. Patrick was never good at sciences in school and he wouldn’t have understood it’s not normal ice. It gives off carbon dioxide gas. He took some into the stall with him. The fumes burned his lungs—well, it’d be frostbite, really. And then he suffocated when he ran out of oxygen. If he brought enough in, it could have built up enough pressure to force the door open again…but too late for him.”

After a moment, Lilian cleared his throat. “I suggested as much to him and he laughed. He wouldn’t speak with me any more after that.”

“Well, he wouldn’t need to. It’s perfect. He could have made sure he was kilometers away and—and even if he was right in the room, it’s not him directly. Patrick did all the work for him.” Laurent exhaled roughly and took off his glasses. He pressed hard at each eye, then put his glasses back on and stared at the space just over Lilian’s left shoulder. He’d calmed a little and there was more bitterness than outrage in his voice when he spoke again. “The police _can’t_ touch him. Whatever he did, by then it was Patrick’s decision.”

“You can still prove murder without direct involvement,” Barthez said. “A difficult task, but Evra might be cocky enough to let something slip. At any rate, we can suggest it to the police and see if they can find something.”

Eventually Laurent muttered a reluctant agreement, but he clearly found that an unsatisfactory alternative. He inhaled, then abruptly turned to Lilian. “Well, you have found out the truth of the matter,” he said, smiling tightly. His expression was a little rueful. “It’s not what I expected, but you did everything that I asked. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Lilian said, and withdrew.

* * *

Ricardo leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. “But I don’t see why he was still upset. It sounds as if Barthez at least can have his name cleared, and they even have a chance of getting Evra for the murder. Isn’t that what he wanted?”

They were out on the roof of the dormitory, with cups of tea in hand. Lilian stirred his with a teaspoon, then raised it to his lips and took a sip. “I don’t think so,” he said, lowering his cup. He gazed across the plaza just outside the seminary gates. “Justice to Mr. Blanc, I think, means more…that everything is ordered as it should be. Which is a very different sort of justice from seeing that the…that the end received is the end earned. A poor way to put it, but—”

“I understand what you mean.” Then Ricardo smiled, and drank some of his own tea. “I think. I…he wanted it to all be Evra’s fault? Is that it?”

Lilian glanced at Ricardo.

“I would have wanted it that way. It would have been better,” Ricardo said, only half-thinking. He paused, then reluctantly shook his head. “No, that’s the wrong way of putting it. I know, I know. Things can’t always be the way we wish them to be. If there’s—if there’s real justice, it has to be something else than what you want.”

“What happened with Cristiano?” Lilian suddenly asked.

Startled, Ricardo looked sharply at the other man. Then he drained the rest of his tea. A few flecks of the leaves stuck to his lips and he wiped them off, then looked at his fingers. The black specks reminded him of bits of charcoal; he scraped them away with a nail and then flicked them off the side of the building.

“Nothing. It wasn’t him. I was…he’s a demon, no matter what he does, but I can’t blame him for what he didn’t do.” Ricardo cradled his cup in his hands. He could still feel the warmth of the tea in the white ceramic, but it was fading quickly. “I’ve been thinking. When…when Andriy. He kissed me. That’s how he took my—my sin. And then…and then I kissed him, when he was trying to leave. I didn’t do it for—I was only trying to make him remember me. I think.”

Lilian was quiet for a while, only breaking the silence to sip at his tea. His eyes were patient but expectant.

“But I think it did something else, the way his kiss did something—took my fate away,” Ricardo eventually said.

“What do you think it did?” Lilian asked gently.

Ricardo drew a deep breath. He looked up at the sky, still light but graying as the day ended. “I think he’s burning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kaká actually had an accident when he was growing up where he dived into a pool that was too shallow for it, fractured his spine and narrowly avoided paralysis.
> 
> The concept of a sin-eater, or somebody who takes another's sin upon themselves, was once fairly common in Europe.


	3. Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaká and Gianluigi trapped together in a small space.

Gianluigi was still on the doorstep, warily eyeing the inside of the bookshop. When he saw Alberto looking at him, he sighed and bowed his head.

“I’m doing this right, aren’t I?” Alberto asked nervously. He put down the rag and spray he’d been using to polish the symbols carved into the jamb. “I didn’t just trigger anything bad?”

At that Gianluigi’s head went right back up. He blinked rapidly at Alberto, then took a step forward with his hand outstretched. Then he lowered his hand, but kept looking intently at Alberto. “No. No, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Something prodded Alberto’s foot. “I think he’s just annoyed at us again,” said Cesc. “Totally his problem, Gila, not yours.”

Gianluigi’s expression shifted very slightly—most people thought he always looked the same, but Alberto was getting pretty decent at reading the little changes now—as he moved his gaze to Cesc. His mouth tightened. Then he saw Alberto and Alberto didn’t really think he had any expression in particular on, but Gianluigi’s shoulders sagged. He put out his hand again and touched Alberto’s elbow the way he did whenever he was nervous. “I won’t touch them.”

“Good, because you dropped me last time,” Cesc muttered, twining around Alberto’s foot. His tail tickled Alberto’s ankle so Alberto inadvertently jerked it away. “On _purpose_.”

“I’m almost done,” Alberto told Gianluigi. He squinted at the jamb, then spritzed the last symbol at the very top. He had no idea what was in the cleaning spray but it did smell nice, sort of like the herbed pears stewed in dessert wine that the restaurant did in the fall. “Just this and then I’ve got to get the mail to send out, and we can go.”

“Awww, really?” Cesc plopped down on his bottom and looked up at Alberto, his ears drooping. “You just got here!”

Alberto smiled apologetically at the fox demon, then grave the warding charm a rub with the rag. This one had really deep, narrow spikes coming off it and he had to use his nail to force the rag into the grooves in the wood. “I know, I know, but Gianluigi and I are going to my friend’s birthday party.”

When Alberto looked down again, Cesc had been joined by several more foxes, all with hungry looks on their faces. A stifled mutter came from Gianluigi, but he just turned away and glowered down the alley. “Cake?” said Silva.

“You can’t go,” Alberto said hurriedly. Then he squatted down and spread his hands. Now that the foxes were looking so sad, he almost wished he hadn’t brought it up. He’d been looking forward to the cake himself—Adriana joked that pastry chefs didn’t get off work even for their birthdays—and he felt a little guilty about raising their hopes. “I’m sorry, but you really can’t. Adriana’s really nice and she might be okay with demons, but there are going to be tons of people there who don’t even work at the restaurant, and they probably won’t. And she’s a really good friend and I don’t want to ruin her party.”

“No, no, it’s okay. We understand,” Cesc mumbled, looking at the ground. He heaved a sigh, then padded up to rub his head against Alberto’s arm. “Well, have fun.”

Alberto petted his head, apologizing again. Then another fox pushed up and well, Alberto wanted to be fair. So he gave them all quick skritches; one more fox came up with the mail and Alberto petted him as a thanks. With all that, he and Gianluigi got away from the bookshop a little later than Alberto had planned on. Not so bad that it was going to be a problem, but they’d have to hurry to make it to the post office before it closed.

* * *

Figo had no clients scheduled and Lilian was teaching all day, so Ricardo had been left to his own devices since breakfast. He’d spent some time in the library, studying its literature on demons, and had checked on his application to do more research in the Vatican’s holdings. His permit hadn’t come through yet, though the librarian in Rome told him there seemed to be no problems with it and so he should be receiving one soon. After that, Ricardo had had lunch with Lilian and then written and posted a few letters to friends in Brazil. Since the weather was pleasantly sunny, he’d then decided to walk back to the seminary.

He was crossing a busy street when he heard his name being called. Ricardo looked over his shoulder, then started as a car horn blew deafeningly. He whipped around, raised his hand in apology to the irate driver staring at him and then hurried onto the opposite sidewalk. Then he turned around and saw who’d been calling him. He stiffened, then took a deep breath and looked down at the ground. Then he put his shoulders back and raised his head.

Just as Cristiano hopped up onto the walk, Ricardo realized he’d put his hand in his pocket and was clutching his saints’ medals. He forced his hand to uncurl from them, but kept it in his pocket. “Hello,” he said.

Cristiano froze in place. Then he frowned and craned his head so he could peer into Ricardo’s face; their noses were nearly touching. He stared so intently that Ricardo glimpsed his eyes shifting red for a moment. “You’re not possessed,” he said, sounding confused. Then he backed up and grinned while dropping an arm around Ricardo’s shoulders. “You missed me! I knew you would.”

Ricardo stiffened again under Cristiano’s arm. Then the crowd around them cleared as the lights changed and he took the opportunity to simply walk out from Cristiano’s hold. Of course Cristiano quickly caught up, but by then Ricardo had managed to collect himself. “How was the game?” he asked.

“Eh. We won, but it’s a good thing it’s only the start of the season. Shit passing,” Cristiano muttered. Then he made an exaggerated ‘oh’ face and reached into his jacket. He paused and glanced up at Ricardo, then pulled out a mobile phone charger. His mouth twitched. “Well, I’m relieved to see that you’re still jumpy around me. I was starting to think somebody else had gotten to you.”

“Drogba didn’t leave town, by the way.” Ricardo put both hands in his pockets and gazed down the street. Even if it hadn’t been Cristiano interfering with his dreams, he couldn’t bring himself to feel easy around the demon.

Cristiano raised his brows. Then he shook his head and reached towards Ricardo. He stopped when Ricardo jerked away, then snorted and shoved the charger into Ricardo’s coat-pocket before Ricardo could react. “Really? You must have really pissed him off. You look okay, though.”

“He wasn’t angry. He was…we talked, and he left peaceably,” Ricardo said. He halted, then grimaced as he realized he’d stopped well short of any actual reason to do so. Then he shook his head and turned to the right. “Never mind. It wasn’t of any importance.”

“He _did_ do something to you, if you’re acting like that.” Oddly enough, Cristiano sounded upset. He jerked at his jacket and then clasped his hands behind his neck. “I did tell him to fuck off. You’re none of his business.”

Ricardo glanced at the demon. “I thought you said you didn’t—”

“No, I didn’t bribe him, so you can keep saying your prayers with a clean mouth,” Cristiano snapped. Then he dropped his hands. He pulled out his mobile, flipped it open and then flipped it shut almost in the same second. “But I told him. And he’s not such a big shot that he can just blow me off. He thinks he’s fucking immune to demons, because—”

“Never mind. _Never mind_ ,” Ricardo said. He leaned forward till he caught Cristiano’s eye, and then looked at the demon till Cristiano stopped fussing with his phone. “Leave him alone.”

Cristiano grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “You think you can just tell me what to do?”

For all Ricardo’s caution, he never seemed prepared for those strange moments when Cristiano—when Cristiano actually acted like the demon he was. He dropped back; his medals jingled against his fingers in his pocket. Then he took a deep breath. “If I exorcised you, yes. But I’m not going to—”

“Praise God,” Cristiano said sarcastically. His eyes were reddening again.

“I don’t want to argue about Drogba,” Ricardo said quickly. Besides his being surprised by Cristiano’s change in attitude, he was uncomfortably aware of the many innocent, unsuspecting people around them. “It’s—it was kind of you to tell him to leave me alone. But I think he is gone now, for good, and I think that’s enough. I don’t want to see him again.”

“It’s not just about what you want.” Immediately afterward Cristiano smiled his usual amused smile, and so the barb in his words almost passed by Ricardo. “But I don’t want to bother with him either. And you get so damn guilty about stupid people. Well, so what are we doing tonight?”

Ricardo looked sharply at Cristiano. Then he thought the better of his initial reaction and merely smiled. “I’m going back to my rooms to reread the Old Testament.”

Cristiano made a face, then sighed. “Well, at least you picked the half with all the good battles,” he said. Then he rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’m trying to be nice so you don’t _ex_ orcise me, but honestly? You’re boring.”

Surprising himself, Ricardo laughed. He looked away as they approached another crossing, checking the traffic. Then he began to step off the curb, only to have Cristiano pull him back onto it.

By then they had crossed into a part of the city that was made up of mostly museums and other historical monuments, and was fairly empty, since the peak tourist times had passed. The only cars Ricardo could see were a few down the block, but they were already driving out of his view. No car had been coming down either way of the road he’d tried to cross. Ricardo shook his arm free of Cristiano and then turned around to ask the demon not to do that again.

Instead he stopped and stared. Then he yanked his rosary out of his shirt and started to run down the street. Behind him he heard Cristiano shouting at him, but the familiar silhouette darted into a side-alley and Ricardo was too afraid of losing it to look back.

* * *

They were just leaving the post office when Gianluigi began to act oddly. He kept sniffing at the air just like Zlatan, though obviously Alberto wasn’t going to mention that. But the thing was, when Zlatan sniffed around like that, it was because he smelled something dangerous.

“Are you all right?” Alberto asked.

Gianluigi started, then looked at Alberto without saying anything. His hand went to Alberto’s shoulder and he turned around. He sniffed again and his eyes narrowed as he peered at a small alley. Then he nearly took a step towards it before he remembered Alberto was there; he jerked back his foot and looked guiltily at Alberto. “I’m fine,” he said. He hunched his shoulders. “There’s nothing wrong with me. You don’t need to worry.”

“Oh, okay,” Alberto said. Mostly because he didn’t want Gianluigi to look that upset with himself when there really wasn’t any reason to be. He still didn’t know what Gianluigi had smelled, but to be honest he didn’t really want to know. If they didn’t have to do something about it, and it wasn’t going to hurt anyone, he was perfectly happy with just going home and not getting involved into another terrifying adventure with really nasty demons trying to kill them.

And going home was exactly what they did. Alberto did ask if Gianluigi wanted to go after it, but Gianluigi had shaken his head and…well, sort of hustled them back. He also kept looking around a lot, and when he was waiting for Alberto to get the front door open, Alberto caught him staring at nothing with a disgusted expression on his face. But Gianluigi insisted it was nothing and so Alberto just left it at that. He started dinner, promptly got tomato juice all over himself and went to go change his shirt while Gianluigi watched the stove.

When Alberto came out, dinner was off the stove and neatly divided between their plates and Gianluigi wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t in the living room either, or any of the other rooms. And he hadn’t left a note.

Alberto normally didn’t get annoyed at things. Considering how annoying he probably was to other people, what with his clumsiness and screw-ups and getting freaked out at everything, he didn’t really feel like he had a right. And on top of that, he almost never got annoyed at Gianluigi because Gianluigi had given up _heaven_ just so Alberto wouldn’t die, and when he barely even knew Alberto. After that, it was pretty ungrateful to get mad at the angel. But sometimes…well, they were supposed to be at Adriana’s in an hour and half, and Gianluigi wasn’t around but he’d smelled something funny earlier, and even if he was thousands of years old and had magic and was used to killing awful monsters, Alberto still got really worried that someday Gianluigi wouldn’t come back. And mostly Alberto just wished Gianluigi wouldn’t do this quite so much.

After a couple minutes of walking stupidly around pulling at his hair—as if that was going to tell him where Gianluigi had gotten to—Alberto managed to get it together enough to phone the foxes. They and Gianluigi might not get along, but for some reason they always seemed to know where each other was. Usually.

*Um, I don’t know _right now_ but hang on a sec, Jesús and Andrés just came in, and maybe they’ll know,* Cesc said. His voice faded out as he yelled at somebody if they’d seen Gianluigi being an idiot recently. They must’ve answered because he paused, then yelled that no, obviously he meant _after_ Gianluigi and Gila had left because he’d been there for that and wouldn’t need to ask about it. Then he came back on the phone. *Sorry, Gila. No idea where he is, but we can look for him? If you’re really that worried?*

“Oh, that’d be great,” Alberto said, relieved. “If you’re not busy or anything…”

*No, seriously, we’d be happy to. There’s always somebody free, and if he’s being a jerk and making you worry, of course we’re gonna help you out.* Cesc yelled at someone again about keeping the kits out of the fridge, then told Jesús to round up whoever was just lying around and get over to Gila’s. *Be there in a jiffy.*

Alberto blinked. “You’re…wait, are you coming over?”

Cesc had already hung up. For a moment Alberto stared at the phone. Then he put it down and looked around. Dinner was still on the kitchen counter, Adriana’s present was next to it…right. Alberto phoned Adriana to let her know they might be a little late, then grabbed his dinner plate. He tried to eat, but only got a few mouthfuls down before he gave up; he wasn’t exactly freaking out, or at least he wasn’t flailing around like an idiot, but he wasn’t that calm either. He knew Gianluigi wasn’t in the apartment but he kept looking into different rooms like he thought the angel would magically appear.

Well, Gianluigi could do that. It was just that when Cesc and his friends showed up, Gianluigi hadn’t, and by then Alberto had started to flop his arms around just so he had something to do. Since he didn’t know what to do and he always didn’t know what to do, and he just—he really was mad at Gianluigi right now. It was a weird feeling and he didn’t like it, and he just wanted Gianluigi to get back right away so he’d stop feeling like that.

* * *

Ricardo chased the shadow through a series of twisty alleys. Once he got close enough to glimpse the actual body, but all that he saw was a patch of dark fabric that could have been a shirt or a suit-jacket. Then the shadow slipped around a corner and Ricardo nearly lost it.

He ran around the corner at top speed, then hastily stopped himself just short of a high gate. It was made of wrought iron, rusty but twisted into the elaborate ornamentation of a bygone era, and it stood between him and what looked like an abandoned courtyard. Piles of rubbish were strewn over the long grass, and the remains of a fountain poked out from behind a gnarled rosebush that clearly hadn’t been pruned in years. Standing on the rim of the fountain was something man-shaped, in a dark suit with a white shirt-collar. It had blond hair.

The moment Ricardo opened his mouth, it jumped off the rim and disappeared behind the bush. Ricardo grabbed the gate and yanked, but the bars only rattled. He looked down and saw that the doors had been chained together. There wasn’t time to even think about breaking it, even if Ricardo had had the tools—Ricardo seized the bars, hauled himself up onto them and jammed his feet into the iron whorls.

He climbed the gate easily enough, but once he’d reached the top he ran into difficulties. The edges of the bar were sharp and cut at his hands, and then they snagged at his clothes. He tried to swing his leg over onto the other side, only to have the bar catch his trouser-leg and jerk him back. Ricardo teetered for a moment, then irritably yanked his leg down and shoved his foot back beside his other one. He pulled his sleeves over his hands and gripped the top, staring into the courtyard.

“Hey! Hey! Don’t go in there!” Cristiano had caught up. “Don’t! You idiot, that’s not a garden, that’s a—”

The courtyard suddenly rippled, as if someone had dropped a pebble into a still pond, and Ricardo felt a surge of magic. He pushed himself back, but it was like he was moving in honey. Some force was pulling at his arms and upper body and trying to drag him over the gate.

Ricardo pushed his feet against the iron bars and wrapped his fingers around the top of the gate as tightly as he could. It cut into his palms but he only locked his teeth against the pain. He couldn’t seem to open his mouth to speak any spells, and when he shook his head to try and free it, the force jerked so sharply at him that one foot came out of the gate. He was immediately yanked towards the courtyard, and so quickly that he had no time to put his foot back. His other foot was still jammed in a curlicue but he could feel it slipping.

A hard grip suddenly took hold of his free ankle; Ricardo flinched from it before realizing it was pulling the opposite way as the courtyard. Cristiano. The demon was cursing furiously—ordinary swear words, not incantations—and making the gate rattle, which was actually destabilizing Ricardo’s hold on it. Ricardo tried again to speak so he could let Cristiano know, but the force clamping his jaw shut abruptly tightened to the point of real pain. His eyes watered. Then he closed them and concentrated as hard as he could. He could do very little without being able to speak or to use his hands, but if he could just buy himself a moment, he might be able to free something…

The magic suddenly dropped away. For a moment Ricardo was frozen, not believing it. Then he slumped over the gate and wheezed out a breath; he hadn’t been able to breathe during the tug of war and was only now noticing that. He breathed in and raised his head, and the force whirled up around him and pulled him over the top of the gate before he could react. Something tore at his ankle, but then it went away and he was falling.

* * *

Alberto took the foxes to the alley near the post office that Gianluigi had thought was suspicious. They sniffed around for a while but finally had to admit that they weren’t finding anything suspicious. “Which totally doesn’t mean there wasn’t something, but it’s just long gone,” Cesc said, patting Alberto’s arm. Then he turned around and stared down the alley, frowning and pulling at his hair. “So he didn’t say what it was at all?”

“No. I mean, I asked…well, I asked if he was fine and he said yes, and he looked sort of upset at himself so I didn’t want to push in case that upset him more,” Alberto said. He bit his lip and fiddled with his coat buttons. Now he wasn’t annoyed at Gianluigi so much as having a cold hard knot eat up his stomach with worry. “I should’ve asked, shouldn’t I?”

Cesc looked back at Alberto. Then he sighed and walked forward a few paces. He scratched at his ear, paused to let it go furry, and then scratched at it again. “Well, Gianluigi’s sort of a tightass so it’s not like you know he would’ve answered even if you had asked,” he muttered. “Um, okay, so…”

“I didn’t think there was anything big enough in town to get him interested,” Xavi said. He was pulling at his nose and looking thoughtfully at Cesc. “Drogba’s gone back to England, and the rat demons still haven’t come back from the last extermination Gianluigi did.”

“Yeah, I know. And Silva says that he just passed by the restaurant and Zlatan was totally screwing what’s his name, the cranky one—”

“Sandro,” Alberto blurted out, blushing.

“Sandro, yeah, they were getting busy in the upstairs, so I don’t think it’s some dumb fight of theirs,” Cesc finished. He put his hands on his hips and looked irritated. “What else is there? Honestly, there are plenty of nonfallen angels around who can handle the evil around here, so why Gianluigi feels like he’s gotta run around town doing it is beyond me. And when he has birthday cake waiting for him!”

Alberto blinked, then hissed and checked his watch. Forty-five minutes till Adriana’s party was supposed to start. He had called and told her they’d be late, but even if they found Gianluigi this instant, they’d still have to go back to the apartment first because he’d left her gift there and then Gianluigi might need a shower in case he killed something again, and—and Cesc was shaking Alberto a bit and asking if he was all right. For a moment Alberto didn’t even remember why Cesc was there.

Then he did and he felt guilty because it wasn’t their problem. It was his and he’d dragged them into it, and the least he could do is not forget that. “I’m sorry. No, I’m—I’m—I’m not really okay but I’m not going to flip out or scream yet. I just—I just wish this night was going better. That’s all.”

Cesc stopped shaking Alberto and just peered into Alberto’s face for a few seconds. Then he looked down. He seemed to want to say something, but instead he just rubbed Alberto’s arms a few times. Then he let go of Alberto and stepped back. “He’ll be okay, Gila. He’s such a nasty jerk that he has to be.”

“We’ll find him, wherever he is,” Xavi added. Then Xavi narrowed his eyes at something further down the alley. “Whatever he’s chasing, it better be good if he can’t just leave it to Father Thuram and Kaká either.”

“Kaká?” Cesc said. “C’mon, seriously? Father Thuram, okay, he’s pretty good, but Kaká wanders around at night looking for things to fight just as much as—oh.”

For a good minute he and Xavi just stared at each other. Then Xavi slipped into fox form and scurried off down the alley, yelping as he went, and Cesc slung his arm over Alberto’s shoulders. He turned Alberto around and started leading them back to the car, as from all over the alley foxes emerged from the shadows to follow Xavi.

“Don’t worry, Gila,” Cesc said. “We got this one all covered now.”

* * *

The ground Ricardo fell on was not soft, but it made for a considerably less painful landing than he’d anticipated, given how the courtyard had looked. His right arm and his hips took the brunt of it, but he managed to roll over to dissipate the impact. Then he rested on his stomach for a few seconds, catching his breath.

Ricardo pulled his arms under himself and pushed on his hands, then got onto his feet. He quickly checked himself, found only bruises and that he’d retained his rosary, saints’ medals and pocketbook of incantations and Biblical verses, and then he began to look around.

He wasn’t in the courtyard—not the one that he’d seen from the gate, at any rate. That was hardly a surprise, but what was surprising was where he had ended up. The space was completely devoid of any green, and instead the bare ground appeared to be made up of a powdery, grayish dirt. It was still surrounded by walls, which went up into a mist that prevented Ricardo from seeing more than about two meters above his head. The air was cool and a little damp, but not uncomfortable.

Ricardo took out his rosary and wrapped its beads around his hand. He said a prayer and the air around him seemed to shiver a little, but otherwise nothing was affected. He put out his foot and cautiously dragged the heel through the ground to create a shallow furrow. Then he stepped back and watched the furrow.

For a few moments nothing happened. Then, slowly, the dirt began to shift by itself. It slid into the furrow and then smoothed over, and it was as if the spot had never been touched. That sealed the conclusion in Ricardo’s mind: he’d stumbled into a crossing. In folktales and so forth they were often associated with fairies or other entities that supposedly lived in a parallel world, but in reality they were merely areas where for some reason magic had become highly concentrated, creating a distortion that semi-separated the places from the rest of the earthly plane. They belonged neither to heaven, nor to hell, nor to the mortal world, and so none of the normal rules worked in them.

Nor did Ricardo’s abilities. He couldn’t—he couldn’t _feel_ anything, and for a moment he felt a spark of panic. It was so like how it’d been when Andriy had taken his magic.

Ricardo shook his head, then took a deep breath and made himself think calmly. A crossing was hardly a good place into which to blunder, but there were ways to escape. The easiest would be if someone from the outside opened up the gate for him.

For a brief moment Ricardo wondered if Cristiano was trying to do that. Then he shook his head again. He couldn’t count on it, and anyway he was not entirely certain he’d accept the demon’s help. Lilian would be expecting Ricardo back in a few hours and he would come looking, and since Ricardo hadn’t been trying to disguise his trail it shouldn’t be too difficult for Lilian to find him. On the other hand, Ricardo would hate to put Lilian to the trouble…that and, if Ricardo was honest, his pride would be a little pricked at having to be rescued from such a silly mistake.

The gate was no longer visible, but that didn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t there. Ricardo took a step towards the blank wall, intending to examine it more closely. Then he whipped about and stared at the far side of the courtyard. He’d heard something. A tearing noise.

It came again but louder. A crack appeared in the far wall, starting about the middle but swiftly growing in either direction. Then chunks fell out of it to dissolve into the ground as it began to widen. Ricardo looked quickly around, but saw nothing that he could use to defend himself. In most parts of Brazil he could carry a hunting knife and a small pistol without attracting much comment, but in Europe he could risk having such things on his person only when he was going directly to a fight. The Church’s blessing did not extend to obtaining dispensations from the local gun laws.

Ricardo took a step back, then glanced over his shoulder. That wall still looked solid, but he wasn’t certain he could rely on that. He turned sideways so he could keep one eye on each wall, and manipulated the rosary about in his fingers so that the long end stuck out. Then he frowned and looked down at his hands. He’d felt a… _swirl_ of something. Magic.

He moved his hands again. Nothing happened, but then he remembered this place was one of no rules. No…no set incantations, no restrictions…he moved his hands a third time, not in any particular pattern but with the thought that he wanted something to happen.

White flames suddenly licked out from his fingertips. He hissed and went to slap them against his legs, only to realize that his hands weren’t burning. He didn’t see the flesh burning and he didn’t feel it. When he raised his hands, the flames looped down as far as his wrists but then raced back up to his fingers to dance there like will ‘o the wisps.

A loud, sudden crack made Ricardo look away, back at the broken wall. Now he could see something tall and dark moving in it. About the size of a tall man, and as it came closer, it began to take on the features of a man as well. Ricardo took a deep breath.

The head came out. Flat eyes stared at Ricardo. Then Gianluigi slowly tugged his left arm and left leg free of the crack, and planted his foot down in the dust. “I understand that you prefer to be disruptive, but I was under the impression that you had more experience than to be caught in such an elementary trap,” he said.

“I—I have no such preferences,” Ricardo stammered. Then he put his hands down and breathed in deeply. He started to raise one hand, noticed that the flames were still clothing it and thought hard for a moment. The flames died down, leaped up unexpectedly and then extinguished themselves. “Pardon my rudeness, but you startled me. I had no intention of causing trouble to anyone else and I’m sorry if I put you to any.”

Gianluigi regarded Ricardo contemptuously for a few seconds. Then he leaned out further and peered about the courtyard with precisely the same expression. He seemed to come to some conclusion and nodded curtly as he leaned back. His eyes crossed Ricardo in the manner of a man forcing himself to acknowledge an unpleasant reality. “Are you coming out?”

Ricardo was irrationally tempted to refuse, but he suppressed that idiotic impulse and made his way over to the fallen angel. He paused when he was about a meter away—the crack was barely wide enough to admit Gianluigi and he had to admit he wasn’t pleased with the idea of contact with the fallen angel—and Gianluigi edged his feet back while keeping his arm in the courtyard. Gianluigi extended his hand with obvious reluctance. With an equal lack of enthusiasm, Ricardo took it.

The moment his fingers closed around the fallen angel’s, Gianluigi yanked him through the crack. Ricardo felt his body stretch impossibly long, then snap back so violently that he lost his balance. He nearly let go of Gianluigi’s hand as he fell; he did stumble into Gianluigi’s leg so hard that the fallen angel’s knee buckled. They both toppled over and then were dragged sideways so quickly that Ricardo didn’t have time to even gasp.

* * *

With Cesc perched on the dash and a terrified Jesús clinging to Alberto’s shoulder, Alberto and the foxes raced through the streets looking for Kaká. Alberto wasn’t sure why they had to go so fast but every time he used the brakes, Cesc would yelp like someone had hit him and Alberto’s foot would jerk back to the accelerator.

“Left! Left!” Cesc shouted. Then he eeped and apparently lost his footing, because suddenly he was rolling across the dash, wide eyes showing occasionally behind his wildly spinning tail. He caught himself against the far side of the car, stuck his claws into the dash and scrambled back up front, looking at whatever it was outside that was telling him where to go. “Straight ahead! Okay, stop! Stop! Gila, st—”

Alberto stomped on the brakes. The car actually _fish_ tailed a little and even if he was Italian and knew that culturally they were supposed to drive like that, he still didn’t really like it. He wrestled desperately with the wheel, narrowly avoided jumping the curb and finally skidded safely into a clear parking spot. Jesús rocked wildly on Alberto’s shoulder, then dove into Alberto’s shirt the moment the car stopped.

Luckily Alberto was wearing an undershirt so it only tickled a little, but even so, Alberto had to squeeze Jesús back out before he could even think about putting the car into park. He felt a little bad about it when Jesús’ pop-eyed face appeared, but just bundled the fox demon under one arm. Then he put on the brake, turned off the engine and got out of the car. The ground was kind of wobbly and Alberto just stood on the sidewalk for a moment, holding Jesús and trying to breathe.

“Hey! Hey, you! Yeah, with the fried gel ‘do!” Cesc shouted.

When Alberto looked up, he saw Cesc in human form disappearing around a corner. He sighed and made sure he had a good grip on Jesús, who was muttering about how he hated cars and wished he was back home, and then he went after Cesc.

They ended up in a narrow alley with a gate at the end. There was a man standing by the gate—at least, he looked like a man, but when Alberto looked at him, he got that weird buzzing feeling that meant the man was…something else. He paused.

Cesc didn’t, but instead just stormed straight up to the man, who was looking a bit puzzled by the whole fuss. “Where is he?” Cesc asked. “What’d you do with that stuffy priest?”

“What are you doing here?” the man asked. “And what do you care? He doesn’t like me, so he must think all of you are lower than cockroaches.”

“Oh, asshole,” Jesús said. He popped his head out over Alberto’s arms and glowered at the man. Then he looked up at Alberto. “Um, do you know who he is?”

Alberto shook his head. At the other end of the alley, Cesc and the stranger were well into an argument about Kaká and who he was meaner to, but it looked like it wasn’t going to get violent, thank God. “Do you?”

“You can call him Cristiano,” Jesús said. He cocked a head towards the argument, then stuck his tongue out at Cristiano. “He’s an incubus. It’s a kind of demon. No, it’s okay, we’ll keep him away from you. Maybe we can even get Zlatan to eat him. Though all the gel might make Zlatan have an upset stomach…”

“A demon?” The name sounded familiar and Alberto thought a moment. Then he remembered and he looked more closely at Cristiano. “Wait, is he the incubus that Cesc said was hanging out with Kaká?”

Jesús nodded, then patted at Alberto’s arms with his paws. When Alberto obligingly loosened his grip, Jesús climbed up Alberto’s chest onto Alberto’s shoulder and wrapped his tail around the back of Alberto’s neck. “If he’s here, then Kaká is definitely around somewhere. He keeps following the guy around like Kaká’s not the most frigid…sorry, you like Kaká, right?”

“Um, well, I don’t think he’s awful…” Alberto looked around the alley. To him it was kind of filthy but otherwise seemed perfectly normal. And empty. “Where is he?”

Cesc looked up, then pointed at the gate behind him. “He’s in there.”

After a moment, Alberto cautiously made his way up to Cesc and Cristiano. He was looking as hard as he could through the gate, but he couldn’t see anything inside except a lot of trash. And—no, that was just a broken fountain. But it was a little hard to see in one corner, so Alberto put out his hand so he could lean on the gate.

“Don’t do that!” Cesc snapped, grabbing Alberto’s hand. He dragged Alberto back, then muttered to Jesús that he should’ve been on that. While Jesús was mumbling an apology, Cesc got Alberto by the shoulders and stared hard into Alberto’s face. “Promise me you’re not gonna touch that gate. If you do, you’ll get sucked in.”

“Okay, I…won’t touch it.” Alberto blinked and looked back at the gate. It still looked normal to him, but of course he didn’t really have a good track record with such things. “Um, is it magical? Is it hurting Gianluigi? He’s in there too, right?”

Cesc started to reply, but then stopped himself and looked at Cristiano, who was staring at Alberto with the sort of slightly disappointed expression Alberto was used to getting from professors, employers, policemen…basically anyone of whom he’d ever asked a stupid question. Cristiano put his hand to his jaw, then nodded sharply. “Well, you don’t look half-bad,” Cristiano said. “Your shoes are shit, but I guess ex-angels don’t look at the shoes first.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Cesc said. He hit Cristiano on the arm. “And you’re gonna leave Gila alone or else we’re gonna mob your Gucci ass. Now tell him what happened to Gianluigi and Kaká.”

Cristiano crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s Armani, and why should I?”

“Because we’ll mob your _Armani_ ass if you don’t!” Cesc told him, utterly exasperated. He scratched at his ear, then put his hand on his hip and looked Cristiano up and down. “Okay, we might not be able to eat you—you probably taste terrible anyway, all waxy and stuff—but we’ll totally rip up all your clothes. You’re never gonna be able to wear couture in public again.”

Cristiano snorted, but he did move a little bit away from Cesc. He flicked his gaze over Alberto again, then rolled his eyes up and sighed. “Kaká chased something in here and got stuck, and I was working on getting him out when Gianluigi showed up and went in there. He used the door I was working on and now you’ll have to start from scratch with a new one.”

“Is that going to take long?” Alberto asked.

Cesc turned and frowned at the gate. A shadow near his foot yipped and he told it that wasn’t going to work since there was a human inside too. He started to pull at the fur of his ear. “Uh. Probably not. It’s…yeah, it’s magical, but it’s more of a nuisance than anything…kind of our version of a pothole, I guess you can say. Mostly the problem is we need some stuff from the shop.”

“I don’t need any stuff,” Cristiano said, his brows rising.

“Yeah, well, you’re also a jerk, so you’re probably just going to stand there and keep talking about all the ‘stuff’ you have. Which you’re probably lying about,” Cesc replied in a matter-of-fact tone. He didn’t even look at Cristiano, but instead tweaked at the tip of his ear. “You’re an incubus, c’mon. What do you know about crossings?”

The look Cristiano gave Cesc could have matched the look Sandro got on his face whenever a supplier screwed up an order. Then Cristiano swung back his arms. He cracked his fingers, jerked his head twice to crack his neck, and then he stalked right up to the gate. Worried, Alberto started to ask if it was all right for demons to touch it and Jesús put his paw on Alberto’s cheek. By the time Alberto looked from the fox demon back to Cristiano, Cristiano had already…well, Alberto didn’t know what Cristiano had done but now the gate wasn’t there anymore. Instead there was a big swirly sparkly white blob and Cristiano’s hands were inside it, moving purposefully around.

Chuckling very quietly, Cesc eased up next to Alberto. “Man, that was so easy,” he muttered. “Okay, just wait a couple of minutes, Gila. All you’ve gotta do when they come out is make sure Gianluigi doesn’t kill Cristiano.”

Jesús looked at Cesc. “Wait, he can’t?”

“Yeah, well, he’s kinda helping us out, and Kaká seems to like talking to him, so…he gets a pass this time.” Cesc shrugged. “Plus I think that that’d make Gila even later for his party. You know, since angels don’t eat the bodies so we’d have to get rid of that.”

Party—Alberto checked his watch again, then barely suppressed a sigh. At this point he was really starting to think he’d just have to tell Adriana sorry and give her the present tomorrow at the restaurant. But at least he knew where Gianluigi was, and in a few minutes he’d see the angel. One missed party wouldn’t be too bad as long as Alberto had Gianluigi safe and sound.

* * *

“Congratulations,” came Gianluigi’s measured tones of disgust. “You have…jammed the door, as I understand humans say.”

Ricardo glanced in the direction of Gianluigi’s voice, then pushed himself off his hands and knees and began to look around. That didn’t take very long since there was hardly anything to see: they were in a dark, shapeless space about the size of a large closet with absolutely nothing in it besides themselves. The only reason Ricardo could see Gianluigi was because the fallen angel was cupping a soft glow in his hands. Beyond the weak stretch of that light, it was pitch black.

“What happened?” Ricardo asked. Then he figured it out for himself and shook his head to signal to Gianluigi that an answer was unnecessary. When he’d tripped, he’d nearly gone back through and Gianluigi must have shut that end to keep him out. But then Gianluigi had lost his grip on the exit to the outside world, and now they were effectively stuck between the crossing itself and the rest of the earthly plane. “I’m sorry. I had no intention—”

“For all your lack of intention, you are remarkably apt at initiating dangerous chains of events—”

“I know but I wasn’t trying to,” Ricardo snapped. He sat up and pulled his clothes into place, looking anywhere but at Gianluigi. “I’m sorry that I trapped you in here but I didn’t know you were coming after me.”

Gianluigi snorted. “I suppose that ignorance justifies evil for you?”

“No. No, but this isn’t evil, this is—it’s an accident. I was chasing something in here, and I admit I wasn’t being as careful as I should about it, but evil implies that I have some sort of deliberate plan. And I don’t. If I had a plan, I think I would be smarter than to trap myself as well,” Ricardo said, looking sharply at Gianluigi. Then he put his hands on his head and looked down at his knees. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself. “I thought I saw—Andriy. Do you remember him, or do you forget all about them once they’ve turned away from God?”

“I have not forgotten,” Gianluigi replied after a moment. He sounded somewhat less testy, and when Ricardo risked a glance, he found that the fallen angel was gazing at his glowing hands with an almost thoughtful expression on his face. Then Gianluigi looked up and met Ricardo’s eyes. “You thought you saw him.”

Ricardo nodded curtly. Then he put his hands down on the…surface beneath them. He moved his legs so he could sit without losing the feeling in them, and also so he had more time to compose himself. “His silhouette, and then his back. Or what I took to be those. I can see now that I should have stopped and seen if what I saw matched what I could sense…I’ve been having dreams lately involving him.”

The last part Ricardo hadn’t meant to blurt out. He grimaced and glanced up at Gianluigi without truly looking at him, then looked away, rumpling his hair with one hand. Then he looked at Gianluigi again. He might be flushing so hard that it seemed impossible for anyone to have not noticed it, but the fallen angel was staring slightly past Ricardo without betraying any sign that he had detected Ricardo’s embarrassment. Or perhaps he had and had merely assumed it was part and parcel of the hopelessly weak human condition, as he always seemed to.

“It could be a projection from him,” Gianluigi finally said. He was still lost in thought. “He is still powerful enough for his emotional disturbances to reach that far. Or it could be your unconscious reflecting and expelling what he feels.”

“Why would I be acting on his feelings?” Ricardo asked sharply.

Gianluigi finally returned his gaze to Ricardo, and his expression also returned to its former contempt. “Denial is also a form of sin. If one does wrong, it is better to see that clearly than to try and disguise it under a false pretense of holiness. Such an act may take in your peers but it would not—”

“I’m _not_ trying to fool anyone, least of all myself. I’m only trying to understand and if you’re not going to—”

“I have absolutely no reason to help you,” Gianluigi said, his voice slicing effortlessly through Ricardo’s. He glowered at Ricardo for a few moments, then abruptly got to his feet and looked to his right. The glow around his hands dimmed briefly, then doubled in brightness. “You are more than well enough equipped to distinguish good from evil on your own, and the purpose of your humanity is to allow you the…freedom of choice to err. You have sufficient will of your own to take full advantage of that gift. If I was to attempt to direct you, I would be usurping.”

“Then why did you come after me? The last time you said it was because your…your companion is fond of me, but I don’t think he and I are that—”

Gianluigi glanced back at Ricardo, then turned his whole body so it was facing right. “I said no such thing. I said that Alberto would be upset, but he has a rare generosity of concern for others. I would try to prevent you, or anyone else, from causing him more than he already suffers, but that is not why I came here. He has no idea that you or I are here.”

“Doesn’t he worry when he doesn’t know where you are?” Ricardo asked.

In all truth, he hadn’t meant it as a barb. He was still rattled from Gianluigi’s easy dismantling of his composure, but he wasn’t trying to retaliate. He wasn’t even collected enough to think about that, and had only been musing out of curiosity and a temporary lack of manners. But the way Gianluigi looked at him then showed he’d clearly hit a sore point. He stepped back, then spread his hands and began to apologize.

“I have little reason to help Andriy either,” Gianluigi said. He spoke more curtly but with a softer voice, as if the comment wasn’t intended for Ricardo. He resumed staring out into the darkness, with a slight twist of his hand signaling continued discomfort. “He might have have—he may deserve some pardon for initially following the Morningstar, if his confusion was real, but he has had centuries to think on his choice. And that it is you who finally caused him to reconsider does not recommend his so-called redemption to me.”

“I never intended that either,” Ricardo slowly said, after several minutes of silence had passed. He unwrapped his rosary from his hand and began to click the beads between his fingers without praying; he sought some relief in the familiar repetition of the movement. “I didn’t know he loved me almost till he—till he fled Milan. I don’t know why he would. I don’t consider myself worthy either.”

Gianluigi glanced over his shoulder, then unexpectedly wheeled on Ricardo. He strode forward before Ricardo could do more than stare up at him. The fallen angel was already of an imposing height and build, and the sharp rise of power around him only added to his menace. 

Ricardo belatedly put up his hand—the one holding the rosary. The flash of silver seemed to catch Gianluigi’s eye and he looked at the cross. The planes of his face twitched with disdain as he settled back a half-pace. “You could handle it better than you have,” Gianluigi finally said.

“How?” Ricardo snapped. In his frustration he forgot what Gianluigi was and pushed at the fallen angel as if he was another man. “How should I? How can I? I can’t find him, and even if I could, I don’t know what to do. He wanted to leave. I couldn’t keep him against his will, could I?”

“You could have taken his wings,” Gianluigi said after a moment.

“What would that do?” Didier had mentioned them as well, and called Ricardo cruel, and while Ricardo would admit to his mistakes he was beginning to feel as if he’d somehow been set up. He was trying to do what was morally right but at this point he didn’t even know where the lines of morality were. “I—please explain to me. I want to know, so I can avoid making a mistake, or fix it if I’ve already made it. But I don’t understand the importance of the wings.”

Gianluigi stared at him for quite a while. The angel’s expression was never particularly informative, but normally because it betrayed no emotion. At the moment it did, and to a surprising degree—but that made it just as unreadable, for Ricardo couldn’t distinguish one emotion from the other. He thought he read irritation and disgust and pity in it, but his reading changed from moment to moment while the planes of Gianluigi’s face didn’t shift a bit. At one point Ricardo even thought he saw a strange sort of self-reproach.

“If you can fly, you can cross between the planes,” Gianluigi finally said. “Others have to use force to accomplish the same feat. Even those who Fell—they retained that power. They cannot enter Heaven, but they can still fly up to the gates, should they wish and should they somehow slip past the guardians. And if you can fly, you can still hear God.”

“And you can’t hear God without them?” Ricardo asked.

“You can. But as you do—dimly, indirectly, through His creations. When I had my wings I could hear Him as if He’d only just taken His hand from my formation.” Then Gianluigi turned brusquely away, giving Ricardo his shoulder. But his voice softened, and his stare into the blackness was full of surprisingly raw yearning. “They are the sacrifice for remaining on the earthly plane. You can no longer hear God but you can love someone alongside Him, and you can feel—you can lie by your loved one and hear their heartbeat as you once heard Him, and it does not feel like a betrayal.”

He was speaking about himself, Ricardo belatedly realized. For some reason, even though Ricardo had been informed of Alberto’s and Gianluigi’s past history, he had never truly…felt the weight of it might be the best way of putting it. He was somewhat friendly with Alberto, who took supernatural events with an admirable lack of disbelief even if his demon fox friends were a little off-putting, and he had a distant respect for what Gianluigi was. But he’d never quite believed that Gianluigi could care for a mere human.

“But Andriy rebelled. He didn’t merely agree to leave the ranks,” Gianluigi added. “He rejected God’s hand and so he cannot simply surrender his wings. He will keep them till someone takes them by force from him, and till then he can neither enter Heaven, nor give it up and live among men. He _has_ no choice now and that is due to you, whether you planned it or not.”

Before Ricardo could answer, the darkness suddenly ripped open. He started back, blinking hard at the blinding white light that poured over them. Then something grabbed his hand and yanked him forward.

* * *

“No! No, don’t kill him!” Alberto immediately jumped in front of Kaká and Cristiano, swinging his arms out to either side to block them from Gianluigi. Then he remembered Jesús and he looked down to find the fox demon clinging desperately to his coat, wide-eyed. He winced and grabbed Jesús by the hindlegs to support him, only to throw out his right arm again when he glimpsed Gianluigi moving. “Please, Gigi, he got you out and oh, my God, what _was_ that? Are you all right? I just turned around and you weren’t there, and we’re late for Adriana’s party and it’s okay, I don’t care but are you _okay_?”

At that point Alberto ran out of air. He wheezed a little, staring up at Gianluigi who was just standing there and staring back.

“Yeah, so like, you got him really worried.” Cesc’s head popped out from behind Gianluigi, then craned around so he could give Gianluigi a dirty look. “He called us and we found you, and geez, hug him before he hyperventilates already.”

“I’m sorry,” Gianluigi said. He took a step forward with his hands up, but they just fluttered up and down alongside Alberto’s arms without actually touching him. He was starting to look upset, in the way he did when he thought he’d screwed up some human rule. “I thought I left a note.”

Alberto shook his head and Gianluigi looked even more stricken, so Alberto started to hug him. Except there was a squeak and then Jesús hastily squirting out over Alberto’s back and then jumping to the ground, and Alberto wasted a couple seconds being embarrassed before he grabbed Gianluigi’s hands. “No, but I just—I didn’t know where you were and you acted like you’d seen something dangerous before, and I thought you’d gone after it. And I know you know how to kill a lot of things but I just…I always think you’re going to come back with a broken wing like that one time and I don’t really like remembering that, even if it ended with you staying with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Gianluigi said again. His fingers brushed over Alberto’s face, as if Alberto was the one who might’ve been injured. “I—I felt a distortion that hadn’t been there before, and wanted to shut it before it trapped anyone. I thought I could deal with it before we went, but I should have asked you first. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He was okay. Alberto looked him over and aside from getting increasingly worked up, Gianluigi had all his limbs and wasn’t cut up or mauled or anything. He pulled the angel towards him, then wrapped his arms around Gianluigi as the angel pushed his face into Alberto’s shoulder. Gianluigi’s hands clutched at his shoulders and it sort of hurt, but they started to relax as Alberto petted Gianluigi’s hair. And Alberto started to relax.

“Yay!” Fox demons all around the alley clapped their paws or hands. Then they cheerfully dismissed Alberto’s stammered thanks as they slipped into shadows or scrambled up over the roofs.

In a moment only Cesc was left with them. Well, him and Kaká and Cristiano. Almost as soon as he remembered the other man, Kaká was offering his apologies for ruining Alberto’s night. Alberto distractedly said it was fine—it was, actually, since he was pretty sure Kaká hadn’t called Gianluigi out or anything like that, because if that’d been it Gianluigi would have said something. Mostly Alberto was busy hearing the churches strike the hour and realize that they actually did still have time to make Adriana’s party. He grabbed Cesc and Gianluigi and started to hustle them towards the car.

He didn’t notice the odd look Gianluigi was giving him till they were already on the road. For a moment Alberto didn’t understand, and then Cesc asked from the backseat if they could turn on the radio. “Oh…well, he really helped out a lot, and I think if we stick him in your coat and he promises to hide, it’ll be okay for Cesc to come and get some cake,” Alberto said to Gianluigi. “Are you…what do you think?”

“Whatever you want,” Gianluigi said after a long moment. He touched Alberto’s brow gently and at the same time twisted the wheel so they stayed on the road. Then he leaned back. He gave Cesc, who was cheering, a disgusted look but he didn’t object. And he would have if it really mattered, so Alberto took that as a yes.

Gianluigi safe, Cesc happy and a good party to look forward to: not a bad night after all.

* * *

“I was trying to tell you,” Cristiano said in an exasperated tone as they sat on the church steps. “That thing popped up this morning and it’s been throwing off all sorts of weird things. If you saw Andriy it was probably just the crossing feeding off your repressed mind, because Andriy’s nowhere near here.”

Ricardo clasped his hands between his knees and gazed up at the night sky. At this hour it was perfectly quiet in the square, and in the odd moment when both he and Cristiano had breathed in at the same time, just before they ruined the silence by exhaling…he thought he could almost hear something. A kind of crystalline singing. He was probably imagining that too; he was not a saint and knew that quite well. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

“Wow,” Cristiano said after a long moment. “Somebody _has_ gotten to you.”

“Do you know where Andriy is?” Ricardo asked, turning to him.

Cristiano’s brows arched sharply. For a moment he looked about to answer, and then he merely shook his head.

Ricardo turned away, feeling irritable. He picked at a nail, then almost snapped at the demon. Then he rolled his shoulders back and made himself swallow his temper, and instead think calmly. “Do you know how to find him?”

“Maybe,” Cristiano said. “But why would you want to know?”

“Because I want to talk to him. I want to see him,” Ricardo said. He took a deep breath. “I told him I’d wait for him to come to me, but…I can’t wait. I want to see him sooner than that.”

He looked up when he heard Cristiano rise. The demon stood on the steps and stared down at Ricardo, the starlight glazing him so that the bright colors drained from his clothing. He looked like a marble statue—save for his eyes, which were like liquid silver but defiantly alive. Almost viciously so.

Then Cristiano put his hands on his hips and pivoted on one heel. He started to walk down the steps. “Keep that phone charged up,” he called back as Ricardo started to get up. He didn’t look back. “I’ll call you.”

Ricardo sat back down, and watched the demon go. Then he gazed out at the square, now completely alone. He put his head down and closed his eyes, and listened again.


	4. Coal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaká and Andriy meet again, and Lilian does a hell of a lot to keep it from ending the world.

Lilian paused, then smiled at the trainee before him. “I beg your pardon, but would you mind repeating that? I’m afraid my attention drifted for a moment, which is entirely not your fault.”

“Oh.” The trainee blinked twice, then looked rueful. “Ah, I’m sorry, Father, but I’ve just forgotten, actually. I…we were…were we talking about…is that a phone?”

It was. While Lilian was relieved to find that age wasn’t diminishing his senses as quickly as he’d feared, he was more puzzled by the ringtone that they were both hearing. They were standing in the seminary’s dormitory, so presumably the phone belonged to someone with a room in the building, but who would set their phone to jingle to a pop song glorifying Satanic sex rituals? Even if Lilian did have to admit it had a rather catchy chorus.

The phone continued to ring and the trainee twisted irritably about, muttering under his breath. Then he shot a guilty look in Lilian’s direction; Lilian had heard the near-blasphemy but chose to instead turn around and walk slowly towards the ringing. From the look on the young man’s face, he was already doing a fine job of castigating himself over the lapse and would police himself better than any scolding of Lilian’s would accomplish. And besides, Lilian was more than a little sympathetic.

Lilian arrived at what appeared to be the correct door just as the ringing suddenly ceased. For several moments Lilian stared at the door. Then he belatedly remembered the trainee and their conversation, and he turned to look for the other man in time to see Kaká coming up the hall towards him. Kaká slowed slightly in surprise, then quickened his pace. “Do we have a job?” he asked.

“Ah, no,” Lilian said, shaking his head. “I was returning for a reference for my afternoon class, and happened to stumble into a conversation.”

“Oh.” Affection and exasperation flitted hand-in-hand over Kaká’s face. He stood back from his tense pose and absently ran one hand through his hair. Then he held up a letter-size envelope, looking pleased. “I’ve just come from the reception desk. My permission to research in the Vatican library just arrived.”

Lilian immediately clapped his hands to Kaká’s shoulders and congratulated the man. From there they fell into a discussion about Kaká’s travel arrangements and, once the trainee had shyly made his presence known, where Kaká should stay in Rome. Fortuitously enough, the trainee had family there and offered to contact them on Kaká’s behalf.

After that Lilian had to excuse himself so he would make his lecture on time. But just as he was leaving, he remembered the ringing and mentioned it to Kaká, since it had sounded as if it was coming from Kaká’s room. For a moment Kaká looked as puzzled as Lilian. Then comprehension dawned and he muttered that it must be the phone Cristiano had given him, and turned on his heel with clear irritation. While he unlocked his door, he promised Lilian that it wouldn’t happen again and that he’d come by Lilian’s room after dinner for a list of queries he could research in the Vatican’s shelves on Lilian’s behalf. Then he stepped into his room, and Lilian went down the hall with the trainee. At the time it all seemed perfectly ordinary.

* * *

According to the phone, Cristiano had left a voicemail, but when Ricardo tried to access that, the phone demanded a pass-code that Ricardo didn’t have. He thumbed off the call and stared in frustration at the mobile, and told himself it was entirely possible that Cristiano was only calling to tease him or try and make him lose his temper. He hadn’t heard from the demon in nearly a week, and the last time had been when he’d asked Cristiano to find Andriy for him, but…he couldn’t rule out a prank. If it was serious surely Cristiano would call back.

Ricardo weighed the phone in his hand another minute, then scrolled to Cristiano’s number in the Contacts list and hit ‘call.’

He heard one ring and then an electronic beep. *Cristiano’s busy, so leave your name, number and availability.* Even filtered through electronics, the seductive purr in Cristiano’s voice was ridiculously blatant. But then Cristiano sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice was purely irritated. *Unless you’re Kaká, in which case you need to meet me at midnight tonight at the entrance to the Parco delle Cave. I found what you were looking for.*

Ricardo ended the call. He pursed his lips, looking at the phone, and then slipped it into his pocket as he walked into his bedroom. He was already thinking about which tools he should probably take with him, and how he was going to sneak out of the seminary without Lilian or anyone else noticing.

* * *

The first inkling Lilian had that something was amiss was when a knock at his window woke him just a few hours from dawn. At first he assumed it was a dream, or a rickety shutter—the building was sound but very much aware of its age—and ignored it. But the knocking was persistent, and then a soft tingle of magic joined it.

Lilian sat up sharply, one hand going to the Bible beside his bed. He peered at the window and just made out a small dark lump with two triangular protrusions at its top. Then he took his hand off the Bible and got out of bed to open the window.

On the outside sill was sitting one of the fox demons. Once Lilian had lifted the warding spells, the demon slipped inside and onto the floor, and in an instant had transformed into a concerned-looking man. “I’m Raúl,” he said. “We were—”

“I remember.” Lilian smiled a little absently, more concerned with the fox demon’s unexpected appearance than with etiquette. If his memory was serving him well, Raúl was the effective leader of the fox demons staying at Figo’s shop. “I apologize that I still haven’t learned to tell you apart in your fox-form, but…may I presume you’re not here to take me to task over that?”

“No.” Raúl looked uncomfortable. At first Lilian assumed it was due to the holiness of their surroundings, but then he noted how Raúl kept avoiding his gaze, and not the crucifix on the wall or any similar object. Then the fox demon sighed and set his shoulders. “I’m sorry to be calling on you, but your student’s in danger and we thought you should know.”

“Kaká?” Lilian asked sharply.

Raúl nodded, then reached into his pocket and pulled out something wrapped in a white cloth. He picked open the cloth before holding his hand out towards Lilian. In his palm laid a small black stone. It had an irregular shape, but Lilian had to nearly put his nose against it before he saw that the shape was not natural. Instead the stone had been roughly carved so it resembled a coiled snake with two vestigial legs. Then Raúl turned the stone over with his thumb to reveal three symbols etched into the base.

Lilian stepped back. “Wait. This will take a minute.”

Then he turned around. He went to his closet and dressed, and then took down his luggage case from the top shelf. After setting it on the bed, he opened it and then took out two wooden boxes. One held the Bible he took with him on missions, while the other contained vials of holy water and a silver knife. He put the vials in his pocket and strapped the knife to the spine of the Bible, which he put into his satchel along with a spare shirt, a few candles and two apples he found in his fridge.

When he returned to Raúl, the fox demon had already transformed and was sitting patiently on the windowsill. Raúl had rewrapped the carving in the cloth and it was on the sill beside him. Lilian picked it up, made certain that the cloth was knotted tightly enough to prevent it from coming loose, and then put the bundle into his satchel. Touching the bundle was unpleasant, as if Lilian had rubbed his fingers over the cold body of a dead animal. He murmured a prayer under his breath, then told Raúl that he would take the stairs and meet the demon on the front steps. Raúl nodded, then melted into the shadows around the corners of the sill.

Once he’d shut the window, Lilian leaned against the frame and bowed his head. He said another prayer, for Kaká, and then he closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. He needed to keep his head.

He could not blame himself, Lilian said silently. So far he did not know what had happened or why and how Kaká could have fallen into such trouble, and he could not say yet what role he may or may not have played in it. That would come afterward, when they were both safely home.

Lilian lifted his head. He looked outside at the graying sky, then turned around and went out.

* * *

Somewhere above him Ricardo could hear chanting. The thick cloth bag that’d been shoved over his head kept him from making out the distinct words, but he had the impression that the chanters were standing in a circle around him. There were only four or five of them, and none of them had any true power. Then he heard a scratching hiss and smelled cheap incense: these were not people who truly knew anything about demons or demonic summonings, he decided. They were ignorant, misguided fools who were going to damn their souls for eternity over their stupidity.

They were also going to try and kill him. He twisted till he was off his back and onto his side, then pulled up his legs. He could only raise them about ten or twelve centimeters before the rope around them jerked him to a stop. But it gave a little, and then wobbled again when he yanked hard, and from that he deduced that they’d tied the other end to some sort of stake, which might come out of the ground if he pulled hard enough. His hands were tied behind him and the grass was too short to grip, so he started to shuffle his body towards the stake, thinking that he could twist around and grab it with his hands.

One person broke the chanting to tell him to stop, but was almost immediately reprimanded and made to start chanting again. The scolding came barely in time to prevent their summoning spell from collapsing and dropping them all into Hell. Ricardo hadn’t bothered to pause, and when he sensed a crescendo in the chanting, he struggled all the faster to reach the stake.

Ricardo’s attackers had known enough to search him and to take away anything he could use to defend himself, save for his rosary. But the rosary by itself was ineffective against other people, nor could he use it to thwart the summoning unless he had his hands and mouth free. In truth, there was very little in terms of magic that he was permitted to employ against a human being who had no supernatural aspects—he did know of certain forbidden methods that he could use, but as confused and angry as he was, he was not going to allow himself to slip again only because other people had chosen to reject God’s grace.

His hip bumped into something hard and he lost his balance, falling heavily on his side. He bit down hard on the wad of cloth gagging him, then wrenched himself backwards till his fingers scrabbled over the top of something metal and square. He felt further down it and found a thick knot of rope. For a few seconds he idiotically attempted to undo the knot, and then he abandoned that as too slow and simply wrapped his hands around the stake. At the first pull the stake came out a few centimeters, but then Ricardo lost his hold on it as someone shoved him between the shoulderblades with their foot.

He kicked out blindly, then heaved himself back. As soon as his fingers touched the stake’s head, he clenched them over it and then jammed his feet as far under himself as they would go. Then he hauled upward with all of his strength. He wasn’t going to stop till the stake came out or he fell over from the effort.

The stake came up sharply, then jerked to a stop. Ricardo swayed dangerously but stubbornly kept his hold on it. The moment his feet had steadied under him, he started pulling again. After a few agonizing seconds, the stake finally lifted free of the ground; Ricardo slammed down hard on his knee but managed not to fall on his face.

The chanting abruptly rose into a wild scream, then stopped. Everything was quiet except for the frantic panting of Ricardo’s attackers.

Ricardo froze, then fumbled hurriedly with the stake. He slipped it out of the looped end of the rope, then turned it so he could stab its point into the rope around his wrists. The rope tightened so his left hand immediately went numb, but he kept twisting with the stake till part of the rope dragged over his knuckles. The rest of it immediately loosened and he shoved it off his hands, then ripped the hood off his head.

At the same time, a brilliant light flashed up all around him so he only had a glimpse of bodies in dark clothing. Then he heard screaming and the wet crunch of bones being broken, and a low rasping sort of hiss, as if something was being pulled over the grass. He threw up his arm, then pulled the gag out of his mouth and started on the rope around his ankles as he spun on his feet, trying to peer out into the light. It was as if—they’d gotten the spell backwards. He was inside the summoning circle and the demon should have appeared with him, but instead it’d come through outside the circle. And instead of protecting the summoners from it, the circle was protecting Ricardo.

It was also imprisoning him, he found out the moment he tried a spell. His magic simply dissolved into the shining wall of white. Then Ricardo started as a particularly shrill shriek cut through the air. He inhaled sharply, then lashed out at the circle without thinking; people were being hurt by something supernatural and he couldn’t stand for that, no matter what they’d done.

For a moment Ricardo thought that that spell had been absorbed as well. The wall didn’t change in brightness or in uniformity. It was still blindingly bright—and then it was gone, and he was kneeling on the grass amid torn bodies and huge swathes of blood, and ten meters away was a scaly, snake-like demon with its head raised as high as a man could stand. It was staring at him with black eyes, its bloody jaws wide open and its fangs gleaming where the blood hadn’t coated them.

Ricardo still had the stake in his hand, but nothing else. He could exorcise the demon without a Bible—he had long since memorized the relevant passages, and he had enough power to do without the sacramental Host or holy water—but he needed enough time. And as the demon lunged at him, it became clear that he was not going to have that.

* * *

“It’s Figo’s car,” Raúl said, gesturing to the vehicle at the curb. Another fox demon was sitting on the hood, and a third was behind the wheel. “We have to go outside of the city, and this would be fastest for you.”

“It’d be even faster if we could just get somebody to _shift_ you there, but Gianluigi and Alberto are watching the shop for us, and stupid Zlatan says he can’t call Hell to report a rogue _and_ beat up lindorms at the same time,” the fox demon on the hood said. It looked highly disbelieving as it hopped onto the top of the car and then snaked inside when Lilian opened the back door. “Me, I don’t see why he can’t—”

Raúl took the front passenger seat, and as the car pulled away from the curb, he leaned back to glower at the other fox demon. “Cesc, he _needs_ to have someone in Hell close that gate or else we’ll have lindorms all over the city, and he can’t close it on this end without sacrificing a baby. And no one will stand for that.”

“I agree,” Lilian said. “Now, do you know how Kaká was taken?”

“He could’ve sent one of his angels,” Cesc muttered. “Doesn’t take all three of them to dial Hell.”

“Cesc, _enough_. They need to find Andriy, since Gianluigi won’t.” After another moment’s glower, Raúl sighed and turned to Lilian. “No. I don’t. I…have to admit to you that we’ve had someone following Kaká for a while. You may or may not know that he sneaks out at night to meet with Cristiano, or to do exorcisms without you. We thought that that was worth watching out for.”

It was neither the time nor the place to debate the merits of that decision, although the information did raise several questions in Lilian’s mind. He filed them for later and maintained his steady gaze on Raúl. “And your tracker didn’t see what happened?”

“She saw that Kaká went to near the Parco delle Cave and was dragged off the street into a van, and then followed the van. But she doesn’t know why he was taken, how his takers knew he would be there or why he was going to the Parc in the first place.” Raúl turned at a query from the driver, replied in a low, barking demon tongue and then turned back to Lilian. “She saw them stop at a farm outside the city and draw a summoning circle for lindorms, but she doesn’t know why they chose him as bait.”

“I see,” Lilian said slowly. “How many of them are there, and how powerful are they?”

“There are three men and two women, and none of them have any magic whatsoever,” Raúl replied. “But they’ve got a real grimoire, and it’s old enough so that they won’t need magic of their own to raise a lindorm.” 

Lindorms were something Lilian had only read about, but he had dealt generally with grimoires enough times to have a plan of action in mind. He pulled his satchel onto his lap and opened it to take stock of his supplies. They were scant, but if he was careful and the fox demons were willing to lend their help, they should be enough to disrupt a summoning. “Has anyone called the police yet?” he asked. “Or a hospital?”

“Um…no…” Cesc crouched on the seat’s top, looking at Lilian over Lilian’s left shoulder. “Because we’re…demons and this is…like, magical…”

“Well, yes, but once the supernatural issues have been dealt with, I think we still have a matter of one person unjustly putting another in danger, and that surely is something for the public authorities,” Lilian replied. He pulled out his knife and tested its edge: a little dull. Perhaps Kaká had had his pistol with him—but they couldn’t rely on that. “I do my best but I’m afraid that my powers exclude punishing other people for their crimes.”

“I guess we can get somebody to call, but don’t you think we should wait till the lindorm’s gone? Because that’s gonna be hard to explain, and I’m betting you don’t use your powers to break out of jail or insane asylums either,” Cesc said. He hopped down onto the seat and let the car’s turn slide him over to the window, where he busied himself with yipping at something outside.

Raúl leaned back from the front seat again. “We can handle the lindorm if it’s already been summoned, but the people…including your student…”

“I will see to them,” Lilian said. He resheathed the knife and closed his bag, then gripped the top flap as he let out a slow, deep breath. He had to trust that Kaká could handle himself till they arrived. As difficult as it was, Lilian forced himself to put his worries aside and concentrated on preparing himself for the fight ahead. Then he offered Raúl a slight smile, stopping the demon from turning back around. “Thank you very much for the help. I’m well aware that you have no reason to give it, and more than few why you shouldn’t.”

“We don’t like your student much, but he hasn’t hurt any of us yet,” Raúl said after a moment, frowning. He glanced at the driver, then sighed and ran one hand through his hair, pulling at his ear. “To be honest, it’s not helping him so much as—we like this city. We like living here, and we’ve worked hard to make a good home here. We don’t want to see it be torn apart like our old home was.”

Lilian raised his head. “Torn apart? I thought these were—misguided cultists, or of that mindset.”

“They are, but it looks like—I don’t want to say for sure yet, because we’re still working on finding out, but it looks like an archduke gave them that grimoire,” Raúl explained.

“I see,” Lilian said after a moment. He glanced out the window, then looked at his watch. Nearly ten minutes had passed since Raúl had shown up at his rooms, and they still had some time before they reached the park. Lilian breathed in slowly, then put down his arm. He adjusted his glasses while staring forwards. “Well, I believe I shall have to speak to them, in that case.”

* * *

The lindorm smashed its head into the ground, the wind of it grazing Ricardo’s face as he threw himself out of the way. He scrambled onto his feet and nearly stepped on a white, staring face—he jerked up his head, hearing the rustle of scales, and then flung himself towards a nearby tree. At the last moment he dodged around the trunk, which shuddered as the lindorm crashed into it. Ricardo started back around, intending to double back on his tracks while the beast was stunned, but barely avoided a tongue of flame blasted at him.

His sleeve caught on fire and Ricardo beat his arm against his side as he scrambled backwards, then finally tore off his coat. The lindorm’s head snaked out from behind the tree and he tossed the still-smoking garment at it; distracted, the lindorm snapped the coat out of the air and chewed savagely at it as Ricardo ran for the next tree.

This one had a low-hanging branch. Ricardo leaped up, scraped the sole of his left foot against the branch as he stretched his arms desperately upwards, and just managed to grab a higher branch. He yanked himself up over it, then twisted around to see where the lindorm was. At first he thought it’d vanished, but then the tree shook violently and he looked down to see that the beast had already caught up and was twisting itself around the tree’s base. Ricardo shoved the stake into his waistband and then climbed frantically upwards, hoping that he could put enough distance between himself and the lindorm to jump clear.

Behind him he could hear the lindorm’s grunts, the rasp of the scales over the tree bark. A hot blast of air clawed at his heels and he nearly unseated himself trying to pull his feet away from it. Then he heard a zipping noise, similar to the sound made when one ran their thumbnail quickly along a rope. He looked down, saw the lindorm’s gaping maw shooting up at him and instinctively swung himself out of the way. His feet slipped, then came off the branch. For a moment he hung weightlessly as not so far below, a tiny seed of fire welled up in the lindorm’s throat.

The seed unfurled in an instant into long tendrils of fire that shot up on either side of Ricardo. He felt their scorching heat—and then he was cool, unburned, on his feet on the grass but doubled over while someone held him up by the waist. He gasped, then jerked up as a rapid glimmer moved along the edge of the vision. The lindorm had seen them. As it turned towards them, snapping its teeth, whoever had Ricardo lifted him up and then dragged him back.

A kind of dark mist closed on in Ricardo from either side, and for a moment he thought of his dream. Then he grabbed the stake from his waist and twisted himself free, then spun around with the stake held high.

The world was suddenly grey but calm. Ricardo could no longer hear the lindorm, and when he turned around, he found that both the lindorm and the park had disappeared. In its place was an empty field that stretched in all directions as far as Ricardo could see. The grass had an ashy hue to it, the way it would grow if it rarely saw sunlight, and the sky was so uniformly overcast that it looked as if someone had pinned up a blanket. Ricardo turned back more slowly.

Andriy was standing in front of him. The angel was wearing a white suit, as when they’d first met in Brazil, but his clothes were dusty and wrinkled as if he’d only had them to wear for a long while. His eyes were steady but sad, and he had a gauntness to him that seemed to echo their desolate surroundings. “Hello,” he said.

For a while Ricardo couldn’t speak. He stared at the angel, his eyes running wildly over Andriy: they’d start to focus on some detail like a rip in one sleeve, only to jump to another spot and then another. He breathed out roughly, nearly scratched his eye with the stake when he lifted his hand towards his face and then irritably tossed the stake aside. It landed in a clump of grass, then rolled a little before finally coming to rest.

Andriy’s eyes followed the arc of the stake without any real interest. Then he looked at the sky, and still watching it, began to turn.

“Wait!” Ricardo lunged forward and seized the angel by the elbow. He stammered a moment, oddly shocked by the solidity of Andriy’s arm, and then made himself straighten. “Wait. I—I’ve wanted to see you.”

“I know,” Andriy said.

After a moment, Ricardo ducked his head, too irritated at himself to meet the angel’s eyes. He used his free hand to rumple his hair, staring about himself for inspiration. “It’s—where is this? Is this where you’ve been for…since I saw you last time?”

“This is Limbo.” Andriy’s arm turned slightly in Ricardo’s grip, but only so the angel could gesture at the field. Then he dropped his hand, still looking at Ricardo with the same slightly distant resignation. “No. I’ve been other places.”

Limbo. Ricardo vaguely remembered a few weeks on Dante in a literature class long ago, in which he hadn’t been very interested because he’d only taken the class to fulfill an academic requirement. And some discussions with Lilian during nights waiting for demons to walk—and again, he’d not been interested. Limbo had no practical application for him; Dante might have made it into an apology for his favorite pagan authors, but in reality it was a forgotten plane of existence, rarely involved in the war between Heaven and Hell. In fact, Ricardo had been under the impression that human souls couldn’t enter it at all.

“They can’t, but I…brought you here, and I don’t think that the rules apply too much to me anymore,” Andriy said. He offered Ricardo a bemused half-smile. “I don’t think that anyone knows what I am now.”

Ricardo shut his mouth. He looked down, then back up at Andriy. He saw the flicker of alarm in the angel’s eyes and tightened his grip on Andriy’s arm, then stepped forward. “Please. Wait. I want…I’ve wanted to see you,” he said. He lifted his other hand towards Andriy’s face. “I know I promised to wait till you returned, but I couldn’t.”

“But I’ve come back,” Andriy said after a moment, looking puzzled. 

Then he pressed his lips together and the confusion in his eyes flicked away as he moved his head from Ricardo’s hand. He stared at it with such hostility that Ricardo pulled it back, then awkwardly put it on his own shoulder. Andriy’s eyes followed it there, and the quality of the emotion in them changed to something just as wary but more…Ricardo pulled open his collar and wrapped his hand in his rosary without thinking. Then he grimaced; Andriy smiled at him, amused and still distant.

“I dreamed about you,” Ricardo abruptly said. He took his hand from his rosary, then put it back and pulled the chain out and over his head. The cross caught him on the cheek and he flinched, then rubbed at the spot with a knuckle. Then he bundled up the chain and slipped it into his pocket, keeping his hand over it. “I dreamed you were on fire. I thought you might be in Hell.”

“I went, but they won’t let me in there now,” Andriy replied.

Ricardo frowned. “You went back? Why would you?”

“It’s what I remember the best,” Andriy said after a moment. He looked at the sky again, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “I knew what to do there, and now I don’t know what to do, so…I went there and asked. But they turned me back from the gate.”

“Why didn’t you come to me?” Ricardo blurted out.

He was wincing before Andriy looked at him, but the way the angel stared at him made him keep his head down. It wasn’t bitter or cold or contemptuous—Ricardo could have met that. Instead Andriy looked at him as if he knew exactly why Ricardo had said that, and as if he sympathized with Ricardo. And Ricardo knew he hardly deserved sympathy. He’d prided himself all his life on acting swiftly and decisively, on bringing a quick end to pain and suffering. Even with demons his aim was not to torture them as they had tortured their victims: he had always told himself he wanted to bring justice and peace to the world, not vengeance. He was only a man seeking to further God’s will, and God had reserved revenge for Himself. But here stood the proof that he’d failed in his mission. Here was why Arioch had thought him a fitting vessel for a demon lord. Here was the product of his selfishness.

A light touch brushed over Ricardo’s cheek. He looked up and the movement of his head slipped Andriy’s hand over his cheek so that its fingers grazed his ear. It didn’t curve to fit his face, but the uneven rest of it against his skin slowed his breath.

“You’re still so beautiful,” Andriy said quietly, almost emotionlessly. “You age, you change, and still I can see it.”

“Can you—” Ricardo inhaled sharply, clenching his hands “—can you ever forgive me?”

Andriy tipped his head. He withdrew his hand and looked to the left while sliding both hands into his pockets. His shoulders hunched, then slumped. He looked back at Ricardo. “Forgive you?”

“For…for bringing you to this.” Then Ricardo winced and pulled his hand out of his pocket. There was blood on his palm, from where the rosary had cut into him. He closed his fingers around it and turned his hand so that he wouldn’t drip on the ground. “I’ve been thinking. I didn’t believe you, what you said about loving me, and then I thought that I could save you. But I don’t think I can save you—I don’t think I have the right to save you. I…I should wait, but I want to _help_.”

The angel looked at Ricardo. He understood what Ricardo was saying, but he was so tired, his eyes said. He was tired and even as Ricardo reached for him, Andriy stepped backward and it wasn’t out of worry that Ricardo would condemn him to Hell again. “You can’t,” he said. His eyes showed a trace of anger: wan, but real. “I don’t want it.”

“I just—I want you to stop running,” Ricardo said. He couldn’t keep himself from taking a step forward. “I have dreams—I know you’re in pain, and—”

“If I’m in pain then it’s my choice,” Andriy replied sharply. He swerved to the left, away from the most outstretched of Ricardo’s hand. Then his mouth curled a little. “Kaká. I left God millennia before you were born. This didn’t start with you, and it won’t end with you.”

“Then why do I keep coming into it?” Suddenly angry, Ricardo threw out his arms. He felt a wild wind rise at his back and for a moment he was afraid of himself. And then he shook his head, and he didn’t care what he might do. He didn’t care, and he didn’t want to know so long as someone finally answered him. “Why me? Why—I didn’t ask you to save me! I didn’t ask you to eat my sin, I didn’t ask you to—”

Andriy put his hands around Ricardo’s face and the wind dropped so sharply that it felt like a sackful of dirt falling onto Ricardo’s shoulders. He staggered, seized Andriy’s arms and then inhaled, staring at the angel. The cool fingers lying against his cheeks didn’t shift with his stumble but they moved now, Andriy gazing at him, running gently down to his neck. Then they rose again to brush the underside of his jaw and he raised his chin, and then he tried to bow his head. His chin bumped into knuckles, skewing it and Andriy’s mouth touched his at a slant, part of it pressing into the space between the left side of his upper lip and his nose.

Then Andriy leaned so his mouth slipped away and his brow rested against Ricardo’s. His hands cupped Ricardo’s head. “I can’t help it,” he said quietly. “I have to stop. I have to—I left there and they won’t let me in _there_ , and I want to stop but instead I keep going back and forth, as if something will change. And you’re beautiful, and in a hundred years you’ll be there and I’ll still be trying to find somewhere to be.”

Ricardo heard something. He moved his head a little, not wanting to lose the weight of Andriy’s hands and brow against him, and when Andriy moved he gasped. But the angel only laid his head on Ricardo’s shoulder, his hands still cradling Ricardo’s face. His hair was dry and brittle against Ricardo’s jaw, but it had something…it smelled so very faintly of something that made Ricardo’s heart ease for no reason. And behind him, his wings silently rose. They were the gray that Ricardo remembered, but they looked thin and almost transparent, as if they’d been cut out of tissue paper.

“Stay with me,” Ricardo said. He put his hands on Andriy’s sides, and then hesitantly on the tops of those wings. His fingers were shaking and he gripped more tightly to make it stop. “Stay on earth.”

“I can’t.” Andriy lifted his head. His eyes were as gray as his wings, and as the sky overhead. “I can’t stay. It’s not my place, where you live. I have to keep moving, do you understand? Because of these.”

His wings lifted. Ricardo’s hands rose with them and on the left Ricardo could see where the blood from his palm had smeared over the feathers. He breathed in sharply, his fingers digging in even harder. The wings shifted in his hands and he tightened his grip till they stopped moving.

“Do you want them?” Ricardo whispered.

He felt Andriy looking at him, but couldn’t meet the angel’s gaze. Andriy’s hands hadn’t closed around his head, hadn’t tightened at all. If the angel wanted he could break Ricardo’s neck, but instead he was only looking at Ricardo.

“If you want to take them—” Andriy started.

“Not me, you. Do you want them?” Ricardo snapped. The shaking of his hands had spread to the rest of his body, and he had to grit his teeth to keep them from chattering.

Andriy spoke, and then Ricardo ripped at his wings.

* * *

“Wait,” Raúl said. He put his hand on Lilian’s arm and then turned. The long tail of shadows they’d had suddenly broke apart into many, some of which streamed up into the trees and others who gained substance only to run into the deep grass. Then Raúl pointed at a clearing ahead of them, his face grave. “The summoners are already dead. They…the lindorm must have turned on them.”

Lilian drew in his breath. Then he took his Bible out of his satchel and started forward. It wasn’t long before he could see the proof of Raúl’s words; he slowed, then set his shoulders and walked on, murmuring a prayer for the dead as he went. Whatever evil that these people had already worked or had intended to work, Lilian would always prefer that they be brought to justice in some other manner.

In the grass a large circle had been burnt, carrying more than a whiff of sulfur. Curiously enough, the features of the summoning circle had been reversed, so that what should have been outside was inside and vice versa. Then Lilian’s foot turned up something in the grass: a thick, heavy book with a ripped and singed leather cover. He picked it up and the paper tingled unpleasantly against his fingers.

The book fell open naturally to a set of pages whose corners had been folded down. They displayed the same circle that was seared into the grass in front of him. Lilian slid his fingers under the right-hand page, then pushed it up and looked more closely at it. He was not an expert in authenticating old texts, but he believed he had read enough of them to have some practical familiarity with them, and the page in his hand didn’t feel as he would have expected. It didn’t match the feel of the other pages either. He couldn’t identify the wrongness more precisely than that.

Lilian closed the book. Stitched to the cover was a strap that ran all the way around it and ended in a buckle that lapped across the page-ends. He fastened the buckle tightly, put the book in his bag, and moved cautiously to the center of the circle. From what he sensed it had been used once and then…shut. And from what he saw, something had slashed through its middle and crushed down the grass in a trail heading towards some nearby trees. One of the trees had smoke coming from its branches.

They were fortunate it had rained the day before, and the trees and ground were still damp enough so that the fire hadn’t spread very far. The tree on fire had broken branches on one side; Lilian walked around to have a better view and then frowned. He looked around, then down on the ground. A pale spot in the charred grass caught his eye and he reached down to pull loose a feather. An angel feather, but grey as ash when it should have been white.

“Priest,” said a deep voice. “This is none of your affair.”

When Lilian turned around, he found himself facing a handsome…being of indeterminate sex. Its skin was an unearthly bronze, gleaming slightly green when it moved and giving it the look of a living statue. “I beg your pardon,” Lilian finally replied. “I’m afraid I can’t say that it isn’t.”

“Your student will be returned to you. Unharmed. If you leave now.” The demon smiled and its teeth _wriggled_. Then one poked its head up from the demon’s lower lip and Lilian could see that each tooth was a small white snake. The demon shut its lips. “This is not a matter for humans. This is between our own kind. The fallen one is a rogue that we cannot allow to remain alive.”

“Andriy’s here?” Lilian asked. He was half-guessing, but when the demon smiled again, Lilian felt very little surprise. He had wanted to let Kaká work through his crisis of faith on his own, in order to respect the other man’s decision, but if he was honest with himself he had never quite believed it was that sort of problem. There were two involved, and so there had to be two resolutions. “Why are you concerned about him? I thought he was no longer marching under your banner, so to speak.”

Under the demon’s feet, the already-burned grass was slowly crumbling to a slate-colored ash. “Why do you ask?” the demon replied. “He’s not your concern either.”

Lilian nodded but looked at his Bible. He let the spine of it fall against his left palm, then caught the bottom cover in his right hand as it fell open. He began to leaf through the pages. “I dislike the sight of anyone’s pain, no matter who they are.”

The demon regarded Lilian for a moment with cool, measuring eyes. Then it spread its hands as if it was helpless; behind it the air began to waver with heat. “He has to die.”

“Why?” Lilian asked.

“He can’t choose,” the demon said. “He must. No one can keep themselves from this war. You know this well, priest.”

Sweat beaded at Lilian’s temple, and he could feel more rising under his collar. He wiped at his face and then put his fingers on the Bible’s pages, which remained cool. “In fact I do not,” he said. “I’ve seen much evidence to the contrary. And I do not believe it is a required article of my faith that endless warfare is what we were intended for, whatever our origin.”

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe.” The demon grinned again and its snake-teeth snapped at Lilian. “It matters what we do.”

Lilian smiled back. “I agree,” he said. “And I will always stand for the choice to seek peace.”

Then he looked down at his fingers pressing the pages flat, and as the wind screamed white-hot around him, he began to pray.

* * *

The sky split violently apart, and beyond it roiled a terrifying mass of flame and lightning. Ricardo staggered back, Andriy’s limp form heavy against him, then dropped to his knees. Andriy slid down him and he grabbed in a panic at the angel, only to stare at the bloody smears his hands were leaving on Andriy’s suit. Then he jerked up his head. He stared at the oncoming fireball, then yanked Andriy over and wrapped himself around the angel as best as he could. The sheer heat was already burning his back and he wondered that he wasn’t crying from the pain, and then he realized that he was, but that his tears were vaporizing as fast as they came.

_You’ve killed him,_ someone said inside Ricardo’s head. _He asked you to help him and you’ve killed him._

No, Ricardo thought frantically. He felt talons searing over the back of his neck and he jerked his head down, burying it in Andriy’s hair. No. No. Andriy hadn’t asked him.

_He didn’t ask you for this,_ the voice said. _But you, you proud little mage, you gave it to him anyway. In the image of God himself, you were made, and so do you act—_

“No,” Ricardo hissed. “No, he didn’t ask, I did, but he’s the one who said no, he said _no_ —”

And then the burning abruptly ceased. Ricardo didn’t dare lift his head, but the air around him was cool and soothing, and when he shifted his shoulders, he felt a light pressure on the back of his head, like a bishop giving a benediction. Another voice spoke to him, the most beautiful voice he had ever heard. It told him he had done his job well and could rest now, and the aching gentleness of it almost lured him into not noticing the tug at Andriy’s body. He hissed and pulled Andriy back, and then tightened his grip. Something warm and wet spurted up against the side of his face, and more flowed sluggishly over his hands, but he didn’t let go.

_You have to give him up,_ the voice insisted. _He has turned his back on the rebellion, but he is still Fallen. He must accept his judgment._

“Can’t you—can’t you leave it?” Ricardo whispered. “It was so long ago—”

The voice rose in volume, and its beauty turned to terrifying, like the rush of wind before a strong storm. _Time does not matter. He is a betrayer._

“He didn’t have a choice! And he should—he should have one.” Ricardo hissed in pain as the grip on his head tightened. He shifted his hands, trying to hold onto Andriy without crushing the angel. Then he sucked in his breath, remembering what Andriy had told him a few minutes before. “He should—”

_There is one way,_ said the voice. _You have been faithful, and have worked many good deeds in the name of Heaven. You may give yourself for him._

For a long time Ricardo pressed himself around Andriy. He could still feel warmth in the angel, so he knew that Andriy wasn’t dead, but Andriy didn’t move at all or show any other sign that he was—was awake. It was quiet while he waited, a strange, soft sort of quiet and for some reason he thought of Brazil, and the time when he’d laid helpless and blind while Andriy had tended to him and Lilian. He’d been angry, the few moments that he’d been awake enough to feel anything. Angry and afraid, because he hadn’t been able to do anything and he had always felt the need to act.

And then he had gone and fallen into Arioch’s trap, only for Andriy to save him and Ricardo saw now that he’d only been angrier after that. He hadn’t understood—he hadn’t _asked_ for it, hadn’t asked for that kind of salvation. But he hadn’t needed to, and it hadn’t been his decision. It had been a gift. The giving wasn’t for him to decide. Only whether he took it was, and he made up his mind about that now.

“No,” Ricardo finally said. He inched his hands up Andriy’s back, through the ichor and the soaked fabric, till he felt the underside of one wing. Then the other. Then he sucked in his breath and stretched out his fingers so that they grazed the edges where the wings had begun to tear away from Andriy’s shoulders.

Andriy hitched. Ricardo was still, not even breathing. Then Ricardo set his jaw, and gripped the bottoms of the wings. The grip on his head was tightening again and he knew from the way that white spots were dancing before him, even with closed eyes, that soon he’d be in too much pain to even think.

“No,” he said again. “No. Either you leave him or you take us both.”

The pressure on his head was _blinding_. And then it was gone, so quickly the shout of pain had barely seeded in his throat. Ricardo breathed out heavily, slumping against Andriy. Then he dug his fingers into Andriy’s wings, feeling fire at his back again.

_Don’t want to give yourself for him?_ Laughter. Burning wind. _Oh, I know._

Andriy stirred again. His head moved against Ricardo’s shoulder. “You should,” he muttered, voice thin with pain.

“I don’t care what I should do,” Ricardo said through gritted teeth. His arms were beginning to shake and in another moment they would be too weak for him to keep hold of the wings. “I don’t care. It all—it’s you. You have to choose. It’s your choice. You can _choose_ now, do you understand? It’s not what they force you to do or not to do, it’s what you _want_. I didn’t, I didn’t see, I only listened to what people said, but now I see—”

“I can’t choose,” Andriy replied. His voice was beginning to thicken. He moved again, and then pressed his knee into Ricardo’s chest. “I can’t—while I have these—”

The wings moved against Ricardo’s hands, their ichor-soaked feathers sticking to him. He staggered under their weight, then inhaled sharply. Then, with the last of his strength, he shoved them up till he felt the bones smash back into their sockets. His feet slipped and he fell so that his face slammed into Andriy’s shoulder, then slid off it.

“I won’t take them,” Ricardo thought, because blood bubbled up between his teeth when he tried to speak, and somehow he still heard his voice speaking over the wild howling. “They’re yours. You have to give them up. I can’t take them, I can’t take what’s not given, or else I’ll be no better than them.”

A hand touched his cheek. The fire was curling up Ricardo’s legs, blistering his flesh. He closed his eyes, and then he felt his arms being pulled up. His fingers dragged over Andriy’s shoulders and then onto the wings. Andriy’s fingers closed them over the feathers, and then Andriy yanked down.

* * *

Cesc scrabbled to keep his grip on the tree branch as the firestorm whipped up into a furious red pillar that stretched endlessly into the sky. The heat grew so intense that he had to slit his eyes against it—and then the pillar collapsed into a cloud of ash and Cesc’s eyes snapped open even though stray sparks stung at them. He thought the priest _had_ to be dead, after that.

But as the ash began to settle, Cesc was able to make out a human figure still standing where the center of the firestorm had been. He glanced at the ground below the tree, then backed up on the branch. When he got to the place where it joined the trunk, he turned around and took a running leap off the branch. The dying wind buoyed him up just long enough for him to soar clear of the smoldering ring and down onto a patch of dirt. Which was hot enough to make him yip, but which at least wasn’t on fire.

A pair of hands scooped Cesc up and he stiffened, then twisted around. Father Thuram smiled tiredly at Cesc. His clothes were tattered and smelled like they were singed—lucky for him that black didn’t really show the traces of exorcisms much—and he had blood on the side of his face. The lenses of his glasses were cracked where they weren’t black and shiny, like obsidian; he shifted Cesc to his arm and then took them off. But Cesc quickly counted and the man had all his fingers and limbs, and probably had all his toes.

“Wow,” Cesc finally said. “You took down an _archduke_. That is so badass.”

“Thank you,” Thuram replied, smiling slightly. But then he looked around and his smile faded. He opened his mouth—

—and a blinding light suddenly came out of the scorched earth to their left. As Thuram threw up his arm to shield his eyes, Cesc scrambled onto the man’s opposite shoulder, ready to toss an illusion spell or call for his packmates or whatever it took to keep away whatever _else_ was coming at them. Honestly, he thought. The next big evil thing should give them at least ten minutes to catch their breath.

The light started to fade. When it was about halfway dimmed, it abruptly cut out and Cesc could see two people lying on the ground inside the circle, the head of one at the feet of the other. The one with his back to Cesc had dark hair—Thuram sighed sharply and Cesc figured that that was Kaká. He couldn’t really see the other one until they turned over on their belly and then onto their hands and knees, so that their bloody back rose over Kaká.

“Oh, crap,” Cesc blurted out. “That’s Andriy.”

Thuram looked at him, then caught him as he slipped down the man’s front from leaning too far forward to see. He mumbled a thanks, still staring at the groggy-looking angel. Ex-angel. All that ichor on Andriy’s back was running from two gigantic gouges in his shoulderblades, and just as Cesc was wondering why Andriy hadn’t passed out, Andriy flopped back onto his face. Cesc grimaced.

“Are you the only one around?” Thuram asked. He started to walk towards the circle, which looked as if it’d shut again.

“Umm…” Cesc swiveled his ears “…hang on, somebody’s coming…wait, it’s not one of us…”

“No, it’s me, furball.” Cristiano slowly came up on the other side of the circle, somehow making a limp look like a strut. He had a black eye and the whole left side of his blazer was shredded, with bits of feathers and flesh sticking to the hanging rags. He paused upon seeing Thuram, hitching himself back on his trailing foot. Then he snorted and tossed down something on the ground: a piece of ichor-stained wood with a lance-head at the unbroken end. “You know, if your stupid student would just _answer his phone_ , maybe I could tell him some fucking angel stole mine and was leading him into a trap?”

Thuram breathed in slowly, but when Cesc looked up, the man didn’t seem all that upset. Then Thuram continued over to Kaká’s side and gingerly knelt down to check the pulse in the man’s neck. He put Cesc down on the ground and began to turn Kaká onto his back.

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Cesc asked, narrowing his eyes.

Cristiano had apparently just noticed Andriy and was staring at him with sort of bulging eyes. Then he blinked and jerked up his head, and gave Cesc a condescending look. “If I was, what would I be doing here? It smells like somebody just exorcised an archduke, I just punched an angel into a sewer, and I could be at home taking a nice bubble bath instead of talking to you.”

“Can you help carry them?” Thuram asked. He had lifted Kaká’s head off the ground and was cradling it in his hands.

“I could be lying,” Cristiano said after a moment. Then he grinned at Thuram and squatted down next to Andriy. He picked up one of Andriy’s arms, let it drop, and then picked it up again and threw it over his shoulders. “Nah. I’m not. But I’m really tired of listening to Kaká go on about how he doesn’t want to sleep with Andriy, and then he makes me find him and almost kicks off an apocalypse. Tell me you’re gonna talk to him about that.”

“I will be speaking to him.” Thuram wedged his hands under Kaká’s arms. He nodded a thanks when Cesc went human and got Kaká’s feet. “Apocalypse?”

Cristiano heaved Andriy up onto his knees, and then dipped so that he could get Andriy over his shoulder. Then he straightened up without even a grunt, the show-off. “His wings,” he said. “The wings of a fallen angel, who’s renounced both Heaven and Hell. You can break open the seals with them and kick off Judgment Day. It’s funny, everybody’s so sick of this war and yet some idiots think the answer is that. Me, I just want to forget about the whole thing and have a nice life. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing at all. This way, please,” Thuram said after a moment. Then he paused, looking up.

Mori was coming towards them, along with several fox demons. When Cesc waved, Mori held up something big and drippy: a lindorm head. Yay, Cesc thought tiredly. Now they could all go home.

* * *

At first Ricardo thought he might have dreamed it all. He was in his bed at the seminary, and alone. But then he tried to move and he hurt so much—even though he didn’t have burns on him, and his feet were still where they should have been instead of lying as piles of ashes…somewhere else. But he hurt, and when he sat there and thought about it, he knew that it’d been real.

He found Andriy sitting on the roof. The angel was so swathed in bandages that at first Ricardo thought he was wearing that soiled white suit, and also missed how Andriy had his legs hanging over the edge of the building. Ricardo stiffened, then cleared his throat. He watched Andriy’s shoulders twitch and then go still, and then he crossed over to the angel.

“It’s different,” Andriy said without looking at him.

Before them the morning was breaking over Milan, a cool grayish light that didn’t do the city much credit, making the buildings look like dark craggy lumps. Nor was it peaceful: Ricardo could already hear the faint noises of traffic, the occasional bark of a dog. But somehow that was better, he thought. If it had been perfect, perhaps it would have been too like what Andriy had missed, and that wasn’t the point.

“Are you…” Ricardo cleared his throat again. Then he gingerly got down on his knees behind Andriy’s left shoulder. He put his elbows up on the balustrade. “Does it hurt?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know.” Andriy turned towards him. The light streaked over the angel’s face differently than before; it took a moment for Ricardo to trace it to the thin lines that grooved around Andriy’s eyes and mouth. Before the angel’s skin had been as smooth as marble. “It’s…”

“Do you hate me?” Ricardo asked. Then he grimaced. He put his chin on his hands, then pressed his face into his fingers.

Fingers drifted lightly over his hair. He turned his head and they slipped onto his face, resting on his chin for a moment. Then Andriy pulled his hand back. He looked at Ricardo, his mouth tightening a little.

“This is all new,” Andriy said quietly. “It’s new and I want to think about it for a while. I haven’t sat down to think for a…a long time. I’ve forgotten what even that’s like.”

Ricardo nodded. He glanced over his shoulder—he needed to find Lilian, and also Cristiano, and ask what had happened. But he didn’t…he lifted his head and moved his hands as if to push himself up, but didn’t rise yet. “Do you want me to leave?”

Andriy didn’t reply. When Ricardo tried to get up, his legs were too weak to support him. He lowered himself back onto his knees and spread his hands a little wider, so that he could push on them better. But then he felt Andriy’s hand cover his own. He looked up and Andriy was still staring at the sky. Then he looked down. He twisted his hand slightly, so that when Andriy’s fingers closed, their tips curled under his own. Then he pulled his free arm across his chest and leaned on it, and stayed where he was. Together they watched how the sky reddened as day flamed up from the wakening city.


End file.
